3  1822  00109  0786 


Till    CELLAR  BOCK  SHCI 

I8OBO     WYOMING 


3   1822  00109  0786 


THE  UNIVERSITY   LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SAN  DIEGO 


HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 


SEVENTH  BISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK 


BY 


GEORGE    HODGES 

DEAN   OF    THE    EPISCOPAL    THEOLOGICAL    SCHOOL 
CAMBRIDGE,   MASSACHUSETTS 


Nefo  gorfc 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1915 

Ml  rightt  reterved 


COPYRIGHT,  1915, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1915. 


NortnooD  13rr»s 

.1.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Kerwick  A  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  T'.H.A. 


THE  WARRIOR-PRIEST 

He  was  our  warrior-priest  beneath  whose  gown 
The  mailed  armor  took  full  many  a  dent 
When,  at  the  front,  all  gallantly  he  went, 
In  civic  fight,  to  save  the  beloved  town ; 

Then  did  the  proud,  outrageous  foe  go  down, 
To  shame  and  wide  disaster  swiftly  sent, 
Struck  by  his  steel  to  flight  —  in  wonderment 
To  see  that  calm  brow  wear  the  battle  frown. 

For  he  was  courteous  as  a  knight  of  eld, 
And  he  the  very  soul  of  friendliness  ; 
The  spirit  of  youth  in  him  lost  never  its  power ; 

So  sweet  his  soul,  his  passing  smile  could  bless ; 
But  this  one  passion  all  his  long  life  held : 
To  serve  his  Master  to  the  last,  lingering  hour. 


RICHARD   WATSON  GILDER. 


CENTURY  CLUB 
December  12,  1908. 


PREFACE 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER,  of  the  Century  Magazine, 
wrote  to  Bishop  Potter  in  1902  in  the  hope  of  persuading 
him  to  be  his  own  biographer. 

"  You  know,"  he  said,  "  what  Samuel  Johnson  says 
about  biography  —  that  every  man  should  write  his  own 
life.  .  .  .  Have  you  not  already  begun  jotting  down 
your  reminiscences  ?  I  hope  you  have,  or,  if  not,  I  hope 
you  will  begin.  Of  course,  such  things  should  be  written 
as  if  not  for  publication.  The  question  of  how  much 
should  be  printed,  and  when,  would  come  in  afterwards. 
You  would  probably  think,  in  writing,  that  it  would  be 
only  after  your  translation  to  the  board  of  heavenly 
bishops.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  might  find  that  many 
chapters  would  be  very  good  reading  during  your  own 
lifetime.  I  am  writing  both  as  an  editor  and  as  a  rep- 
resentative of  our  publishers  in  stirring  you  up  about  this." 

This  pleasant  invitation  Bishop  Potter  declined.  At  the 
same  time,  quite  unconsciously,  he  was  preparing,  year 
by  year,  a  considerable  store  of  autobiographical  material. 

Two  things  we  desire  to  know  about  a  man :  what  he 
did,  and  what  he  thought.  The  canons  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  require  of  every  bishop  that  he  shall  make  a  regu- 
lar and  careful  record  of  these  two  series  of  personal  facts. 
He  must  keep,  and  annually  print,  an  official  journal  re- 
cording all  his  visitations,  his  sermons  and  addresses,  his 
religious  services,  with  dates  and  places.  Thus  the  biog- 
rapher of  Bishop  Potter  is  able  to  find  out  just  where  the 
bishop  was  and  in  what  sort  of  episcopal  act  he  was  en- 
gaged on  the  ninth  day  of  December,  1901,  or  on  the 
twelfth  day  of  April,  1884.  Also  a  bishop  must  annually 


viii  PREFACE 

address  his  diocesan  convention.  Such  an  address  will 
naturally  contain  his  comments  upon  the  progress  of 
events  during  the  past  year,  both  in  his  own  diocese  and 
in  the  church  at  large,  together  with  a  discussion  of  his 
plans  and  policies.  It  will  inform  the  reader  as  to  the 
state  of  his  mind  in  such  and  such  a  year,  in  the  midst  of 
the  problems  of  that  time.  These  addresses  are  annually 
printed,  and  bound  up  with  the  minutes  of  the  diocesan 
convention. 

I  have  made  use  of  these  materials.  And  since  the 
addresses  are  not  easily  accessible  to  the  general  reader  I 
have  quoted  from  them  freely,  finding  in  them  a  revela- 
tion of  Bishop  Potter's  interests  and  purposes,  and  of  his 
attitude  toward  the  changing  contemporary  situation. 
They  were  preceded  by  the  yearbooks  which  he  published 
while  he  was  at  Grace  Church,  each  of  which  he  prefaced 
with  an  address  to  the  parish ;  he  told  them  what  had 
been  done  during  the  year,  and  what  he  desired  of  them 
in  the  year  to  come.  And  they  were  accompanied  by  the 
dozen  volumes  which  Bishop  Potter  wrote ;  two  accounts 
of  foreign  travel,  the  others  mostly  sermons  and  lectures. 
Reticent  as  he  was  in  conversation,  even  with  his  inti- 
mates, he  had,  like  some  other  reticent  men,  a  freedom  of 
self-disclosure  in  public  speech.  There  he  spoke,  as  he 
rarely  spoke  in  private.  Into  these  utterances  entered  his 
faith,  his  devotion,  his  affection,  his  aspiration. 

It  is  possible,  therefore,  that  one  who  follows  him 
closely  along  the  way  of  these  frank  statements  may 
know  him  better  than  some  of  his  close  friends,  certainly 
better  than  any  of  his  ordinary  acquaintances. 

I  am  in  debt  to  the  family  of  Bishop  Potter,  who  have 
greatly  assisted  me  to  fulfil  their  wish  that  I  should  write 
his  life  ;  and  to  many  correspondents,  some  of  them  named 
in  these  pages  ;  but  my  chief  gratitude  is  due  to  the  help 
of  the  Rev.  Dr.  George  F.  Nelson,  and  still  more  to  the 
memory  of  the  Rev.  Laurence  Henry  Schwab.  Canon 
Schwab  was  to  have  written  this  book.  lie  had  prepared 


PREFACE  IX 

himself  to  undertake  it  by  assembling,  sifting  and  arrang- 
ing many  materials.  He  was  qualified  for  the  work  by 
his  excellent  literary  gifts,  and  by  an  understanding  of 
Bishop  Potter,  the  fruit  of  strong  affection ;  he  knew  him 
well.  He  was  about  to  begin  to  write  when  a  fatal  illness 
stopped  him.  His  painstaking  labors  have  made  my  task 
easy.  I  have  had  occasion  to  remember  him  with  thank- 
ful appreciation  a  thousand  times  during  the  making  of 
this  book. 

In  calling  Dr.  Potter  the  seventh  bishop  of  New  York, 
I  have  relied  upon  an  examination  of  the  matter  which 
was  made,  at  the  request  of  Bishop  Greer,  by  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Seabury  of  the  General  Theological  Seminary.  The 
order  is  confused  by  the  suspension  of  Bishop  Onderdonk. 
During  that  period  of  discipline  the  diocese  was  governed 
by  two  provisional  bishops  :  first,  by  Dr.  Wainwright,  who 
served  for  about  a  year,  and  died  in  the  lifetime  of  the 
suspended  bishop ;  second,  by  Dr.  Horatio  Potter,  who  long 
outlived  him.  As  a  matter  of  actual  diocesan  adminis- 
tration, the  bishops  of  New  York  were  Provoost,  Moore, 
Hobart,  Onderdonk,  Wainwright,  Horatio  Potter;  Henry 
Codinan  Potter  was  the  seventh. 

As  these  words  are  written,  the  Chapel  of  St.  James,  in 
the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine,  is  being  prepared  as 
a  memorial  of  him  who  made  the  Cathedral  possible  and 
actual.  On  the  tomb,  which  is  surmounted  by  a  recum- 
bent statue  of  the  Bishop,  are  inscribed  the  words  "  I  saw 
the  holy  city  coming  down  from  God,  out  of  heaven."  It 
is  the  vision  toward  whose  realization  he  directed  the 

energy  of  his  life. 

GEORGE  HODGES. 

ST.  BARNABAS'  DAY,  1915. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    ANCESTRY:  BOYHOOD.    1834-1845 1 

II.  PREPARATION  FOR  THE  MINISTRY.    1845-1857    ...  19 

III.  IN  A  COUNTRY  PARISH.    1857-1859 34 

IV.  A  WAR-TIME  RECTORSHIP.    1859-1866        ....  42 
V.  AN  ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION. 

1866-1868 58 

VI.  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  A  WORKING  PARISH.    1868-1873  .  68 

VII.  THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  A  Dowx-Towx  CHURCH.     1873- 

1878 86 

VIII.  THE  LAST  FIVE  YEARS  AT  GRACE.    1878-1883  .        .        .108 

IX.  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  EPISCOPATE.     1883-1884      .        .  123 

X.  THE  PIGEONHOLING  OF  HERESY.    1884        ....  135 

XL  THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS.     1884-1885    .        .        .146 

XII.     THE  CASE  OF  MR.  RITCHIE.     1885 166 

XIII.  THE  ADVENT  MISSION.     1885 180 

XIV.  THE  CATHEDRAL  IDEA.     1887 195 

XV.  THE  BUSINESS  OF  A  BISHOP.     1887-1889     .        .        .        .208 

XVI.  AT  THE  WASHINGTON  CENTENNIAL.     1889 ....  224 

XVII.     IDEALS  AND  PRINCIPLES.     1889-1891 239 

XVIII.  DIFFERENCES  OF  OPINION.     1891-1895         .        .        .        .256 

XIX.  A  SOJOURN  IN  STANTON  STREET.     1895      ....  273 

XX.     HUMANI  NIHIL  ALIENUM.     1895-1898 286 

XXI.  THE  ORDINATION  OF  DR.  BRIGGS.     1899     ....  302 

XXII.     WHERE  WEST  is  EAST.     1899-1900 313 

XXIII.  To  MAYOR  VAN  WYCK.     1900 326 

XXIV.  COMPLETING  TWENTY  YEARS.    1900-1903    ....  339 
XXV.     THE  PEOPLE'S  BISHOP.     1904-1907 358 

XXVI.    THE  FINISHED  COURSE.    1908 375 

INDEX  .                                                                                                 ,  383 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER Frontispiece 

1903. 

PAGE 

ALONZO  POTTER     50 

Bishop  of  Pennsylvania,  1845-1865. 

MRS.  ALONZO  POTTER 

(Sarah  Maria  Nott). 

HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 

About  1854. 

BISHOP  ALONZO  POTTER  AND  His  CHILDREN 200 

HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 250 

1866-1868. 

HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 306 

About  1890. 

A  BOARD  OF  ARBITRATION  .  ....  .  362 


HENRY  OODMAN  POTTER 


ANCESTRY  :    BOYHOOD 
1834-1845 

THERE  is  a  legend  to  the  effect  that  Alonzo  Potter,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Pennsylvania,  and  Horatio  Potter,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  New  York,  got  their  start  in  life  by  the 
accident  of  a  horse  casting  a  shoe. 

One  day,  early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  Dr.  Eliphalet 
Nott,  president  of  Union  College,  was  driving  along  a  coun- 
try road  in  Dutchess  County,  New  York,  inquiring  for  a 
blacksmith.  A  passing  neighbor  suggested  that  farmer 
Potter  had  a  man  on  his  place  who  could  shoe  a  horse,  and 
Dr.  Nott  drove  on  this  errand  into  Joseph  Potter's  farm. 
While  the  horse  was  being  shod,  the  president  noticed  two 
little  lads  who  stood  by,  looking  on.  "What  are  you  going 
to  do,"  he  said,  "with  these  fine  sons  of  yours?"  The 
farmer  answered,  "I  expect  to  make  them  farmers,  like  my- 
self." " Let  me  have  them,"  said  the  president ;  "send  them 
to  Union  College." 

The  actual  fact,  however,  —  as  is  not  infrequently  the 
case  with  facts,  —  was  somewhat  less  dramatic.  Joseph 
Potter  had  been  elected  to  represent  his  district  in  the  New 
York  Assembly.  In  the  course  of  his  second  term,  which 
was  in  1814,  Dr.  Nott,  being  in  Albany,  spent  an  evening 
in  Mr.  Potter's  room.  There  he  saw  a  composition  written 
by  Alonzo  in  the  course  of  his  studies  at  Master  Barnes's 
academy  in  Poughkeepsie.  The  president  found  this  essay 
full  of  promise.  "I  must  have  that  boy,"  he  said. 


2  HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 

In  the  autumn  of  that  year  Alonzo  Potter  entered  Union 
College.  In  1818,  he  was  graduated  with  the  highest  honors. 
In  1823,  he  married  Sarah  Maria  Nott,  the  president's 
daughter.  Their  fifth  son  was  Henry  Codman  Potter. 

The  Potters  came  from  England  in  the  Puritan  Exodus. 
"My  ancestors,"  wrote  Henry  Potter  to  a  friend,  "came  from 
Coventry  in  England,  where  Thomas  Potter,  whose  arms  you 
will  find  impaled  with  those  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York  on 
this  letter,  was  knighted  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  where  the 
said  Thomas,  who  was  Mayor  of  Coventry,  and  a  dyer  and 
wool-stapler,  made  an  excellent  blue  dye ;  whence  came 
the  proverb,  'True  as  Coventry  blue,'  a  motto  of  which 
we  are  very  proud." 

The  Rev.  Nathaniel  Ward,  minister  at  Ipswich,  is  quoted 
in  Edward  Winslow's  "Hypocrasie  Unmasked"  l  as  a  fellow- 
passenger  with  Robert  Potter,  in  1634.  He  was  much  im- 
pressed by  his  "honesty  and  godliness,"  which  gained  his 
"good  opinion  and  affection."  Potter  was  made  a  freeman 
of  Massachusetts  Plantations  on  September  3d,  of  that  year. 
After  a  brief  stay  at  Lynn,  he  settled  in  Roxbury  and  became 
a  member  of  the  First  Church,  of  which  Thomas  Welde  was 
the  pastor  and  John  Eliot  the  teacher.  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchin- 
son  was  at  that  time  disturbing  the  minds  of  the  conservative 
with  her  doctrine  of  the  Inward  Light.  Potter  was  one  of 
those  who  accepted  her  opinions,  shared  in  her  condemnation, 
and  followed  her  into  exile. 

"His  sins,"  said  Eliot,  "were  first  in  the  time  of  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  when  divers  of  our  church  were  seduced  to 
familism  and  schism  ;  he  was  of  their  side  and  company,  and 
so  filled  with  them  that  he  departed  to  the  Island  rather  than 
would  forsake  them,  and,  being  there,  he  refused  to  hear  the 
church  who  had  lovingly  sent  after  him." 

The  familism  of  which  Robert  Potter  was  found  guilty 
was  an  assertion  that  love,  not  faith,  is  the  most  important 
part  of  the  Christian  religion.  It  was  a  protest  against  the 

1  Them  is  a  copy  of  this  book  in  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library,  at 
Brown  University. 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  3 

prevailing  emphasis  on  theological  orthodoxy.  The  Inward 
Light,  to  which  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  her  followers  gave  heed 
rather  than  to  creeds  or  sermons,  was  a  direct  revelation 
to  the  individual  soul.  It  made  the  church  unnecessary. 
The  believer  entered  immediately  into  the  divine  presence, 
and  learned  divine  truth  without  the  assistance  of  the  clergy. 
Under  the  conditions  of  the  colony  of  Massachusetts,  en- 
deavoring to  maintain  a  theocracy,  wherein  God  should  rule 
by  the  word  of  His  ministers,  these  were  divisive  and  rebel- 
lious doctrines. 

Potter  departed,  therefore,  to  Rhode  Island.  There  he 
settled,  with  other  friends  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  at  Ports- 
mouth ;  where  in  1639  his  name  was  one  of  twenty-nine 
signatures  to  a  document  which  bound  the  signers  into  a 
civil  body  politic  under  the  rule  of  King  Charles.  There 
he  became  acquainted  with  Samuel  Gorton,  who  was  de- 
scribed by  Potter's  old  friend  Ward  as  "a  man  whose  spirit 
is  stark  drunk  with  blasphemies  and  insolences,  a  corrupter 
of  the  truth,  and  a  disturber  of  the  peace  wherever  he  comes." 
Potter  found  in  Gorton  a  congenial  spirit.  Gorton  was 
publicly  whipped  twice  for  reviling  ministers  and  magis- 
trates. Potter,  in  1642,  was  disfranchised,  with  others,  and 
it  was  ordered  that  if  he  should  appear  again  in  those  parts, 
the  constable,  "calling  to  himself  sufficient  aid,"  should 
carry  him  before  the  magistrate. 

Thereupon  Potter  and  Gorton,  with  several  like-minded 
persons,  purchased  a  tract  of  country  which  was  then  called 
Shawomet,  but  which  Gorton  afterwards  named  Warwick  in 
honor  of  the  earl  who  presently  protected  him  in  his  troubles. 
The  troubles  continued.  The  Indians,  who  had  sold  their  land 
for  a  hundred  and  forty-four  fathoms  of  wampum,  complained 
to  the  General  Court  at  Boston  that  they  had  been  unjustly 
and  injuriously  treated.  The  details  of  the  complaint  have 
not  remained  in  the  record,  but  the  matter  was  taken  seri- 
ously, and  the  proprietors  of  Shawomet  were  bidden  to 
appear  and  answer  to  the  charges  before  the  General  Court. 
Refusing  to  obey  this  summons,  claiming  that  they  were  not 


4  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Massachusetts  colony,  soldiers 
were  sent  down  from  Boston  who  besieged  them  in  their 
garrison-house,  and  compelled  them  to  surrender.  The  men 
were  brought  to  Boston,  while  their  wives  and  children 
betook  themselves  to  the  woods.  Under  the  stress  of  this 
hardship  three  of  the  women  died.  One  of  them  was 
Isabella,  wife  of  Robert  Potter.  The  indictment  was  now 
changed,  the  injured  Indians  falling  into  the  background, 
and  the  prisoners  being  accused  of  "blasphemous  errors 
which  they  must  repent  of."  They  were  put  in  irons,  and 
exhibited  at  Mr.  John  Cotton's  Thursday  Lecture.  They 
were  then  confined  in  several  towns,  Potter  being  sent  to 
Rowley. 

During  Robert  Potter's  imprisonment,  Nathaniel  Ward 
visited  him,  and  found  him  "shedding  many  tears."  Ward 
advised  him  to  acknowledge  his  transgressions,  citing  John 
Cotton's  example,  who  had  made  public  confession  upon  a 
solemn  fast  day  "that  in  the  time  when  errors  were  so  stir- 
ring, God  leaving  him  for  a  time,  he  fell  into  a  spiritual 
slumber;  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  watchfulness  of  his 
brethren,  the  elders,  he  might  have  slept  on ;  and  blessed 
God  very  cordially  for  awaking  him,  and  was  thankful  to 
his  brethren  for  their  watchfulness  over  him."  But  Robert 
Potter  was  not  persuaded. 

Thereupon  the  First  Church  in  Roxbury  excommunicated 
him,  partly  for  his  old  sins,  but  also  "for  that  he  was  now 
tossed  with  other  winds  of  new  doctrine,  forsaking  the  Island 
and  joining  with  Gorton,  and  that  not  only  in  his  heresies 
but  also  in  his  heretical,  blasphemous,  and  retch'ful  writings, 
and  publicly  owned  them  in  court,  and  made  himself  guilty 
of  all  these  wicked  ways." 

Gorton  on  his  release  went  to  England,  where  he  secured 
the  reinstatement  of  himself  and  his  associates  in  Shawomet. 
Robert  Potter  appears  in  the  Rhode  Island  Colonial  Records 
as  "Assistant"  for  the  town  of  Warwick  in  1618,  and 
"  Commissioner  "  in  1652.  Thus  he  ended  his  life  a  peace- 
able citizen,  dying  in  1655. 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  5 

John  Potter,1  son  of  Robert,  married  Ruth  Fisher,  and,  of 
their  nine  children,  their  son  John  was  born  in  1669  at  War- 
wick. 

But  when  the  second  John  married  Jane  Burlingame,  their 
son  John,  in  1695,  was  born  in  Cranston,  to  which  place  the 
family  had  removed. 

The  third  John  married  Phebe  Green,  and  John  and  Phebe 
became  Quaker  preachers. 

This  was  a  natural  following  of  the  example  set  by  their 
sturdy,  non-conforming  progenitor.  The  Quakers  of  Rhode 
Island  were  the  heirs  of  Anne  Hutchinson,  with  her  doctrine 
of  the  Inward  Light,  and  of  Samuel  Gorton,  of  whom  it  was 
said  that  he  had  "a  great  contempt  for  the  regular  clergy 
and  for  all  outward  forms  of  religion,  holding  that  the  true 
believer  partook  of  the  perfection  of  God." 

In  this  Quaker  household  at  Cranston  grew  up  a  wild 
young  grandson,  whose  parents  named  him  Israel ;  if  they 
had  foreseen  his  career  they  might  have  called  him  Esau. 
Israel  Potter  ran  away  from  home  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
paddled  a  canoe  up  the  Connecticut  from  Springfield  to 
Lebanon,  N.  H.,  worked  now  as  farm  hand,  then  as  surveyor's 
helper,  then  as  trapper,  selling  his  furs  in  Canada.  He  set 
out  in  a  sloop  for  the  West  Indies,  and  the  ship  was  burned 
to  the  water's  edge ;  he  was  picked  up  from  a  leaky  long- 
boat by  a  passing  vessel.  He  then  entered  on  board  a  whaler, 
in  which  he  made  two  voyages.  Returning,  he  was  just  in 
time  for  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  where  he  received  two 
musket-ball  wounds,  "one,"  he  says,  "in  my  hip,  the  other 
near  the  ankle  of  my  left  leg."  After  six  weeks,  rejoining  his 
regiment,  he  was  given  duty  on  the  brigantine  Washington, 
which  was  guarding  Boston  harbor.  An  English  ship  cap- 
tured the  vessel  and  carried  all  the  crew  to  England.  In 
quarantine,  at  Portsmouth,  Potter  caught  the  smallpox. 
Recovering,  and  being  put  in  the  hulks  at  Spithead,  he  es- 
caped, and  ran  away.  Arrested  as  a  prisoner  of  war,  he 

1<(  History  and  Genealogies  of  the  Potter  Family  in  America."  By 
Charles  Edward  Potter.  1888.  (Part  10.) 


6  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

again  escaped  while  his  guards  were  overcome  with  drink. 
He  changed  his  sailor  garb  for  the  "Church  suit"  of  a  farmer 
and  got  a  job  as  gardener  at  Kew,  where  one  day  he  had 
a  conversation  with  King  George.  Americans  in  London 
sent  him  to  Paris  on  a  message  to  Franklin,  carrying  a  letter 
in  a  false  heel. 

Then,  the  wars  being  for  the  moment  over,  and  hard  times 
coming  on,  there  being  more  men  than  jobs,  Israel  fell  into 
such  poverty  that  he  took  to  the  meagre  trade  of  bottoming 
chairs,  and  wandered  up  and  down  the  London  streets  crying, 
"Old  chairs  to  mend  !"  And  so  life  went  for  many  a  year. 
He  married  in  despite  of  poverty,  and  had  ten  children,  nine 
of  whom  died.  At  last  his  wife  died,  practically  of  starva- 
tion. Four  months  he  was  in  prison  for  debt.  His  son 
swept  crossings.  Then  the  American  consul  got  passage 
for  him  and  his  son,  and  in  1823  he  returned  to  Boston, 
whence  he  had  been  carried  in  1775.  He  went  to  his 
old  home,  but  nobody  remembered  him ;  even  the  house 
had  been  burned  to  the  ground.  He  applied  for  a  pension, 
but  the  application  was  refused.  In  Providence,  in  1824, 
he  dictated  the  story  of  his  life,  and  the  cheap  little  gray- 
paged  book  thus  made  was  sold  by  peddlers  in  the  streets. 
One  or  two  copies  have  survived.1  A  rude  woodcut  which 
makes  the  frontispiece  shows  Israel  Potter  and  his  son  crying, 
"Old  chairs  to  mend  !"  and  a  friendly  woman  giving  them  a 
job. 

Thomas  Potter,  one  of  eleven  children  of  John  and 
Phebe,  born  in  1735,  married  Esther  Sheldon. 

Their  son  Joseph,  one  of  ten  children,  born  in  1757,  the 
family  being  still  in  Cranston,  married  Anna  Knight.  They 
removed  from  Cranston  to  Beckman,  N.  Y.,  now  called  La 
Grange,  in  1792. 

That  the  spirit  of  Robert  Potter  continued  in  strength 
through  these  generations  appears  in  the  person  of  Anthony 
Potter,  a  Cranston  cousin  of  Joseph.  He  was  a  deacon  in 

1  One  copy  is  in  the  New  York  Public  Library,  another  in  the  John 
Carter  Brown  Library  in  Providence. 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  7 

the  Six-Principle  Baptist  Church  of  the  village,  and  a  soldier 
in  the  war  of  the  Revolution.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
on  a  Sunday  morning,  he  drove  the  whole  congregation  out 
of  the  meeting-house,  locked  the  door,  and  went  away  with 
the  key  in  his  pocket,  because  they  persisted  in  praying  for 
the  king. 

Joseph  Potter  is  described  as  "  a  man  of  tall,  erect  person, 
of  grave  and  taciturn  habits,  of  good  understanding,  and 
of  honorable  repute  in  his  neighborhood."  Of  Anna  his 
wife  it  is  said  that  she  was  "a  woman  of  remarkable  char- 
acter and  powers,  having  a  bright  and  ready  wit,  a  prompt 
and  accurate  judgment,  and  a  strong  and  well-directed 
will."  They  brought  with  them  to  their  farm  in  the  wilds 
of  Dutchess  County  their  Quaker  religion,  and  a  few  books. 
Thus  they  were  distinguished  from  their  neighbors.  They 
showed  their  loyalty  to  their  religion  by  naming  their  first 
daughter  Philadelphia,  and  their  first  son  Paraclete.  They 
had  seven  other  children.  Alonzo  was  born  in  1800,  Horatio 
in  1802.  It  is  significant  that  Joseph  Potter  was  sent  to 
the  legislature  in  1798,  having  so  soon  commended  him- 
self to  the  people  among  whom  he  settled ;  and  that 
Paraclete  Potter  became  owner  and  editor  of  the  Pough- 
keepsie  Whig.  This  was  a  public-spirited  family,  whose 
horizon  was  by  no  means  bounded  by  the  fences  of 
their  farm. 

Meanwhile,  the  Notts !  had  come  to  this  country  in 
1640,  and  had  settled  in  the  Connecticut  valley,  at  Wethers- 
field.  Henry  Potter  was  right  when  he  called  himself 
"an  unadulterated  Yankee,  of  the  purest  blood."  His 
ancestors,  on  his  mother's  side  as  well  as  on  his  father's, 
were  of  New  England  Puritan  stock.  They  were  as  patriotic 
as  they  were  religious.  Hannah  Nott,  a  daughter  of  the 
first  settler,  married  John  Hale,  and  was  the  grandmother 
of  Nathan  Hale.  Abraham  Nott,  a  grandson  of  the  first 
settlers,  was  graduated  from  Yale  College  in  the  class  of 
1726,  and  became  a  Congregational  minister.  He  was  a 

1  "Memories  of  Dr.  Nott."     By  Van  Santvoord  and  Lewis.     1876. 


8  HENRY   CODMAN  POTTER 

stalwart  person,  who  had  distinguished*  himself  among  the 
Yale  athletes  of  his  time  by  lifting  a  barrel  of  cider  above 
his  head  and  drinking  out  of  the  bung-hole.  His  son, 
Stephen,  kept  a  store  in  Saybrook ;  but  his  house  was 
burned  in  1759,  and  he  was  plundered  by  highwaymen  in 
1760,  and  these  misfortunes  made  him  poor.  He  removed 
to  Ashford,  thirty  miles  from  Hartford,  where  he  bought  a 
forlorn  farm. 

Under  these  discouraging  conditions  Eliphalet  Nott  was 
born  in  1773.  The  district  school  was  five  miles  away ; 
so  he  learned  at  home,  his  mother  being  his  teacher.  They 
read  the  Bible  together.  When  the  mother,  in  failing 
health,  was  unable  to  go  to  church,  the  little  boy  took 
notes  of  the  sermon  for  her  benefit.  "The  light  of  my 
young  life  went  out,"  he  said,  "when  my  mother  died." 
An  older  brother,  pastor  of  a  Congregational  church  at 
Franklin,  Connecticut,  helped  him  forward  with  his  studies. 
At  the  age  of  twenty  he  was  the  teacher  of  the  Franklin 
school.  Removing  thence  to  the  school  at  Plainfield,  he 
became  engaged  to  the  pastor's  daughter,  Sarah  Maria 
Benedict,  a  young  lady  of  "personal  beauty,  intelligence 
and  pleasing  address."  By  this  time  his  education  was 
so  far  advanced  that  the  faculty  of  Brown  University, 
then  called  Rhode  Island  College,  certified  that  he  had 
all  the  learning  that  was  required  for  a  bachelor's  degree. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  been  studying  theology,  and  in  1796 
was  licensed  to  preach.  He  found  his  first  opportunity  in 
Cherry  Valley,  New  York.  In  1798,  he  was  ordained  by 
the  presbytery,  and  installed  as  pastor  of  the  First  Presby- 
terian Church  of  Albany.  Thence  he  was  called,  in  1804, 
to  the  presidency  of  Union  College. 

Dr.  Nott  came  to  the  college  with  a  wide  fame  as  an 
eloquent  preacher,  which  he  had  recently  increased  by  a 
sermon  on  the  death  of  Alexander  Hamilton.  Crowded 
congregations  attended  his  ministry.  "President  Nott 
preached  in  Brattle  Street  Church,"  wrote  the  pastor  in 
his  diary.  "The  fullest  audience  ever  known  there,  ex- 


ANCESTRY  :    BOYHOOD  9 

cept  on  ordination  day."     And  he  added  an  epigram  made 
upon  the  occasion  by  Josiah  Quincy : 

"  Delight  and  instruction  have  people,  I  wot, 
Who  in  seeing  Nott  see,  and  in  hearing,  hear  Nott." 

Mrs.  Nott  had  died  in  the  spring  of  1804,  after  the  birth 
of  a  daughter  to  whom  was  given  her  mother's  name,  Sarah 
Maria.  Mrs.  Tillotson,  a  friend  of  Mrs.  Nott,  offered  to 
become  a  guardian  mother  of  the  child,  and  the  offer  was 
gratefully  accepted.  Under  the  shadow  of  this  sorrow 
the  new  president  undertook  his  duties. 

Union  College  at  the  time  of  Dr.  Nott's  accession  was 
trying  a  kind  of  monastic  experiment.  "Our  students/' 
wrote  the  president  to  his  brother,  "are  to  be  entirely  sepa- 
rated from  the  great  world.  The  president  is  to  lodge  in 
the  college,  and  board  in  common,  with  his  family,  as  are 
all  the  other  members  of  the  faculty.  Each  class  belongs 
to  the  family  of  the  officer  who  instructs  them ;  and  in 
our  dining  hall  is  preserved  all  the  decorum,  ceremony 
and  politeness  of  refined  domestic  life.  Not  the  least 
disorder  is  allowed  in  or  about  the  edifice.  From  prayers, 
from  church,  from  recitation,  such  a  thing  as  absence  is 
unknown.  The  week  is  completely  filled  with  collegiate, 
the  Sabbath  with  religious,  exercises.  On  the  latter  day 
no  student  ever  goes  from  the  yard  except  to  church,  and 
even  then  he  walks  with  his  professor  in  procession,  sits 
with  him,  and  with  him  returns.  Perhaps  no  college  has 
ever  furnished  such  complete  security  to  the  manners  and 
morals  of  youth,  or  a  course  more  likely  to  ensure  a  thorough 
education." 

This  plan  of  life  was  afterwards  modified  in  deference 
to  the  human  nature  of  youth,  but  it  imparted  a  paternal 
quality  to  the  whole  administration  of  Dr.  Nott.  Ho 
presently  took  all  the  college  discipline  into  his  own  hands, 
and  devoted  himself  with  pastoral  patience  and  much  suc- 
cess to  the  work  of  ministering  to  such  students  as  were 
in  need  of  restraint  or  guidance.  He  and  his  family  lived 


10  HENRY   CODMAN  POTTER 

in  the  college.  When  Sarah  Maria  at  the  age  of  three 
was  brought  back  to  her  father's  house  by  reason  of  his 
second  marriage,  she  grew  up  in  this  atmosphere.  The 
college  pervaded  the  whole  domestic  life.  Books,  studies 
and  students  were  dominant  facts.  The  child  was  ten 
years  old  when  Alonzo  Potter  entered  the  freshman  class, 
and  fourteen  when  he  was  graduated. 

Sheldon  Potter,  an  older  brother  of  Alonzo,  was  a  book- 
seller in  Philadelphia.  To  him  the  young  man  went  when 
he  had  completed  his  college  course.  There  he  became 
interested  in  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  was  confirmed  by 
Bishop  White.  He  decided  to  enter  the  ministry,  and 
began  the  studies  which  should  prepare  him  for  that  work. 
In  the  midst  of  this  occupation,  he  was  recalled  to  Union 
College  as  a  tutor,  and  in  1821  was  made  professor  of  mathe- 
matics and  natural  philosophy.  He  continued  his  theo- 
logical reading,  meanwhile  publishing  a  treatise  on  log- 
arithms, and  was  ordained  to  the  priesthood  in  1824. 
In  the  same  year,  he  married  Sarah  Maria  Nott. 

In  1826,  the  young  professor  was  called  from  his  academic 
tasks  to  the  rectorship  of  St.  Paul's  Church  in  Boston ; 
his  name  having  been  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  vestry 
by  Francis  Wayland,  a  young  Baptist  parson  of  the  neigh- 
borhood, afterwards  president  of  Brown  University.  Way- 
land  and  Potter  had  been  classmates  at  Union. 

The  new  rector  found  Boston  engaged  in  the  violent 
exercise  of  controversy.  Dr.  Beecher  and  Dr.  Channing 
were  maintaining  the  opposite  sides  of  the  contention 
between  the  Trinitarians  and  the  Unitarians.  Mr.  Potter's 
quiet  ministrations  made  St.  Paul's  a  haven  of  peace  for 
persons  weary  of  doctrinal  discussion.  Strangers  wore 
attracted  by  the  devout  order  of  the  service.  "  There  was 
always  a  fine  ecclesiastical  odor  breathing  from  St.  Paul's," 
wrote  one  of  them,  a  Unitarian.  "My  Puritan  nose  snuffed 
it  with  the  gusto  of  an  unlawful  indulgence." 

This  tranquillity  was  presently  interrupted  by  dissension 
within  the  Episcopal  Church  itself.  The  everlasting  dis- 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  11 

agreement  between  the  priest  and  the  prophet,  which  has 
its  place  in  all  religions,  and  in  no  communion  is  quite  so 
evident,  frank  and  continuous  as  in  this,  divided  the  brethren. 
They  debated  on  the  one  side  and  on  the  other  in  the  diocesan 
convention.  Mr.  Potter  was  looked  to  for  leadership.  It 
was  a  situation  for  which  he  had  a  temperamental  dislike. 
He  had  not  inherited  that  impulse  to  go  to  the  help  of  the 
Lord,  which  had  made  his  ancestor  Robert  a  conscientious 
disturber  of  the  ecclesiastical  peace.  At  last,  after  a  rector- 
ship of  five  years,  which  his  people  long  remembered  with 
gratitude,  he  took  advantage  of  a  temporary  impairment 
of  his  health,  and  resigned. 

He  returned,  in  1831,  to  Schenectady  and  to  Union 
College.  He  was  made  professor  of  Moral  and  Intellectual 
Philosophy  and  Political  Economy.  He  was  also  expected 
to  conduct  recitations  "in  logic,  in  rhetoric,  in  mathe- 
matics, geometry,  technology,  trigonometry,  or  in  Greek 
and  Latin  classics,  as  occasion  might  require." 

In  1834,  on  the  25th  of  May,  was  born  his  fifth  child, 
and  was  baptized  in  St.  George's  Church,  April  14,  1835, 
with  the  name  of  Henry  Codman,  a  mark  of  affection  for 
Henry  Codman  of  Boston. 

Henry  Codman  Potter  spent  the  first  eleven  years  of 
his  life  in  Schenectady.  He  was  three  years  old  when 
his  parents  removed  from  lower  Union  Street  in  the  town, 
to  North  House,  South  College.  He  was  brought  up 
amidst  surroundings  wherein  the  pursuit  of  knowledge 
seemed  a  normal  part  of  life ;  books  surrounded  him  on 
every  side ;  the  community  in  which  he  lived  was  mainly 
composed  of  exuberant  youth. 

Union  College  was  pleasantly  situated  in  the  suburbs. 
The  new  buildings,  North  College  and  South  College, 
begun  in  1812,  had  been  completed  in  1820.  The  place 
was  in  the  green  country,  with  a  background  of  western 
hills  across  the  fair  valley  of  the  Mohawk. 

Speaking  long  after  of  the  changes  which  showed  the 
progress  of  the  growing  college.  Henry  Potter  dwelt  with 


12  HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 

the  pleasure  of  a  pleasant  memory  upon  the  unchangeable 
surroundings.  "No  differences/'  he  said,  "can  alter  the 
identity  of  that  wide  outlook;  so  rare  and  beautiful  in  the 
charm  of  its  expanse,  in  the  picturesqueness  and  variety 
of  its  lovely  landscape.  Nature,  in  its  steadfast  and  im- 
mutable characteristics,  still  remains  :  the  silver  thread  of 
the  winding  Mohawk ;  the  break  in  the  distant  hills  where, 
long  ago,  the  sun  sank  to  rest,  just  as  it  sets  to-day ;  the 
corn  standing  so  thick  in  the  valley  that,  in  the  words  of 
the  psalmist,  it  seems  to  '  laugh  and  sing." 

The  first  decade  of  Dr.  Nott's  presidency  had  multiplied 
by  five  the  forty  students  who  wrere  in  the  college  when 
he  came.  In  1820,  the  number  exceeded  three  hundred. 
An  historian  of  the  college  recalls  with  pride  that  in  1825 
it  had  "passed  Harvard  and  Yale  in  the  number  of  its 
students,  and,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  intervening 
years,  held  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  honor  of  being 
the  largest  college  in  the  United  States.  " 

In  his  "Reminiscences  of  Bishops  and  Archbishops," 
Henry  Potter  recalled  his  attendance  as  a  child  upon  the 
services  of  the  parish  church,  of  which  John  Williams,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Connecticut,  was  then  the  rector.  "Mr. 
Williams,"  he  said,  "ministered  to  a  congregation  which 
included  a  row  of  small  boys  of  which  I  was  one.  I  blush 
to  say,"  he  added,  "that  I  cannot  recall  his  preaching." 
He  remembered  more  distinctly  the  instructions  of  the 
Rev.  William  Henry  Walter.  In  his  "Thirty  Years  Re- 
viewed," recalling  past  rectors  of  St.  John's,  Troy,  he 
spoke  appreciatively  of  Mr.  Walter.  "Those  among  you 
who  knew  him,  know  his  earnest,  prayerful  spirit,  the 
sweet  attractiveness  of  his  Christian  character,  and  es- 
pecially his  rare  persuasiveness  as  a  minister  to  children. 
He  had  great  and  unusual  gifts  for  interesting  and  in- 
structing the  young,  and  almost  the  most  striking  feature 
of  his  ministry  was  his  Sunday  afternoon  catechisms.  It 
was  my  own  privilege,  then  myself  a  child,  to  be  one  of 
those  little  ones  under  his  ministry,  when  he  was  rector 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  13 

of  St.  George's,  Schenectady.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
tenderness  of  his  manner,  and  the  deeply  devotional  and 
impressive  character  of  all  his  public  ministrations." 

The  "row  of  small  boys"  was  made  up  of  Henry  Potter 
and  his  brothers,  Clarkson  Nott  (b.  1825),  Howard  (b.  1826), 
Robert  Brown  (6.  1829),  Edward  Tuckerman  (b.  1831), 
and  Eliphalet  Nott  (b.  1837).  By  Dr.  Potter's  second 
marriage,  in  1840,  there  were  three  sons :  James  Neilson 
(b.  1841),  William  Appleton  (6.  1842),  and  Frank  Hunter 
(b.  1851),  who  was  born  after  the  removal  of  the  family  from 
Schenectady.  There  was  one  sister,  Maria  (b.  1839),  after- 
wards Mrs.  Launt  Thompson.  Eliphalet  Potter,  at  the 
Centennial  Anniversary  of  Union  College,  recalled  the  group 
of  boys  looking  down  over  the  college  parapet  upon  the 
town  of  Schenectady,  —  "Dorp,"  they  called  it,  using  the 
language  of  the  first  Dutch  settlers. 

In  1839,  when  Henry  Potter  was  five  years  old,  his  mother 
died.  "There  was  that  about  her,"  said  his  father,  "which 
left  its  perfume  in  any  circle  long  after  she  had  retired, 
which  impressed  beholders  with  the  feeling  that  she  be- 
longed to  a  higher  sphere.  .  .  .  With  a  strong  taste  for 
letters,  and  a  delicate  relish  for  beauty  and  wit,  she  gave 
herself,  seemingly  without  a  pang,  to  her  household,  to  her 
friends,  and  to  any  one  whom  she  could  make  more 
happy.  ...  In  offices  of  tenderness  and  of  assiduous 
kindness  to  those  she  loved,  or  to  whom  she  owed  any  duty, 
in  the  rouno^.  of  little  duties  that  every  day  presents  if  we 
seek  for  them,  in  constant  efforts  to  unite  her  own  intellec- 
tual improvement  with  the  welfare  of  others,  she  so  filled 
up  every  hour  of  time  that  life  became  one  scene  of  self- 
forgetting  activities,  by  which  her  own  nature  was  refined 
and  exalted,  while  she  became  a  centre  of  delight  to  all  who 
knew  her."  H 

The  motherless  children  were  taken  under  the  wise  care 
of  Sarah  Benedict,  a  cousin  of  Mrs.  Potter.  In  1840,  Dr. 
Potter  and  Miss  Benedict  were  married. 

Of  the  lady   who   thus   became   Henry   Potter's   foster 


14  HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 

mother,  her  husband  wrote  after  her  death  :  "Her  practical 
capacity  was  most  varied  and  prompt ;  her  flow  of  spirits 
exuberant  and  even ;  her  courtesy  and  kindness  unfailing ; 
and  her  judgment  in  all  departments  of  life,  and  in  letters 
and  religion,  just  and  vigorous.  With  this  she  joined  a 
passionate  love  for  flowers  and  all  natural  beauty,  and 
great  susceptibility  to  kindness.  Like  other  strong  natures, 
her  convictions  were  profound,  and  her  mode  of  expressing 
them,  when  there  was  meanness  or  criminality,  was  some- 
times vehement.  But  the  fervor  of  her  heart  was  so  tem- 
pered by  prudence  and  charity,  and  her  mastery  over  her 
tongue  so  complete,  that  she  rarely  offended,  and  often 
kindled  in  slower  or  duller  natures  congenial  fire." 

Family  recollections  of  Henry  Potter's  boyhood  recall 
the  brilliant  coloring  of  his  face  and  the  gleams  of  fun 
and  mischief  which  played  upon  it.  Henry  and  Eliphalet 
improvised  surplices  out  of  sheets,  after  the  common  fashion 
of  the  sons  of  the  clergy,  and  conducted  attic  services  with  the 
younger  children  for  congregation,  and  were  ignominiously 
ejected  from  the  chancel,  like  the  Cavalier  priests  at  the 
hands  of  the  Roundheads,  by  Humphreys  the  housekeeper. 

Alonzo  Potter  was  made  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania  in  1845, 
and  the  family  moved  to  Philadelphia.  There  at  the 
age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  Henry  suddenly  developed  a  dis- 
like for  Latin  declensions,  and  a  habit  of  swearing,  phe- 
nomena which  were  perhaps  related.  At  that  time,  the 
Rev.  Robert  Traill  Spence  Lowell,  an  older  brother  of 
James  Russell  Lowell,  was  tutoring  in  Latin.  Henry 
Potter  was  sent  into  the  country  to  spend  two  months 
with  Mr.  Lowell,  in  order  that  he  might  be  helped  over 
these  hard  places,  mental  and  moral.  The  mornings  were 
spent  with  the  Latin  grammar ;  in  the  afternoons,  after 
the  lessons  had  been  duly  recited,  the  lad  was  free  to  play. 

"Henry,"  the  teacher  would  say  as  he  dismissed  him 
to  his  sports,  "swearing  is  very  wrong.  Your  father  has 
sent  you  here  that  you  may  be  broken  of  it.  Remember, 
do  not  swear.  If  you  do,  I  shall  be  obliged  to  flog  you." 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  15 

After  prayers  at  night,  the  teacher  would  say,  "Henry, 
tell  me  the  truth.  Did  you  swear  to-day?" 

Henry,  having  considered  during  the  day  that  the  satis- 
faction of  using  strong  language  was  worth  a  whipping, 
would  speak  up  manfully  and  face  the  consequences.  "Yes, 
sir,  I  swore."  And  the  promised  punishment  would  follow. 

Such  a  pedagogic  method  is  of  course  open  to  the  criti- 
cism that  it  tempts  the  offender  into  the  way  of  lying. 
But  the  teacher  knew  the  boy.  After  this  discipline  he 
returned  to  his  home  at  the  end  of  the  summer  with  plenty 
of  Latin  and  no  profanity. 

In  Philadelphia  a  favorite  amusement  for  the  Potter 
boys  was  to  mount  the  roof  of  the  Episcopal  residence  to 
the  ridge  pole  and  thence  slide  to  the  gutter.  This  had 
gone  on  for  several  weeks  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
family,  when  one  day  the  bishop,  absorbed  in  the  composi- 
tion of  his  annual  episcopal  address,  was  startled  by  the 
irruption  of  a  dishevelled  lady  who  informed  him  that 
her  sister  lay  dangerously  ill  in  the  house  opposite,  and 
that  she  had  left  her  in  screaming  hysterics  because  she 
had  seen  the  boys  in  this  perilous  position.  She  declared 
that  if  Bishop  Potter  did  not  make  his  boys  come  off  the 
roof  at  once,  her  sister  would  die ! 

Another  aspect  of  the  domestic  life  is  given  by  Henry 
Potter  himself  in  a  letter  to  Dr.  Howe,  the  biographer  of 
his  father.1 

"From  the  year  1845  to  the  year  1858  —  nearly  all  of 
them  the  years  of  my  minority  —  (my  father)  was  absent 
from  home  during  a  large  part  of  the  year,  and  when  he 
returned  to  it  was  confronted  by  a  mass  of  correspondence 
and  an  accumulation  of  diocesan  duties  which  gave  him 
scarce  time  to  meet  his  household  at  the  family  board. 
Yet  even  then  he  managed  to  be  a  good  deal  in  the  com- 
pany of  his  family,  and  I  can  remember  that  he  usually 
brought  his  work  in  the  evenings  from  his  own  study  to 

1  "Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Services  of  Rt.  Rev.  Alonzo  Potter,  D.D." 
By  M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe.  Philadelphia.  1871. 


16  HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 

the  large  table  in  the  dining  room,  around  which  three  or 
four  boys  were  generally  buzzing  over  their  more  difficult 
lessons  for  the  morrow.  Amid  these  distractions  he  seemed 
to  have  no  difficulty  in  abstracting  himself,  and  I  can  very 
vividly  remember  the  wonder  with  which,  while  my  eyes 
were  seemingly  intent  upon  my  book,  I  used  to  listen  to 
the  ceaseless  scratching  of  his  pen  as  for  hour  after  hour 
he  wrote  on,  without  a  pause  for  a  word,  or  an  instant's 
hesitation  over  the  arrangement  of  a  sentence.  It  was 
our  custom  on  these  occasions  to  interrupt  him  without 
hesitation ;  and  no  question  of  ours,  whether  it  related  to 
a  problem  in  mathematics  or  to  the  construction  of  a  line 
in  a  Greek  play,  was  ever  kept  waiting  for  an  answer. 

"My  father  always  encouraged  his  children  to  talk 
freely,  and  notwithstanding  that  awe  of  him  which,  I 
thank  God,  I  never  outgrew,  and  which  was  born  of  our 
mingled  love  and  reverence  for  the  rare  and  majestic  traits 
of  his  character,  we  were  wont  to  discuss  all  sorts  of  ques- 
tions in  the  family  in  his  presence  with  much  warmth  and 
without  reserve.  He  rarely  sided  strongly  with  either 
party  in  these  discussions,  seeming  to  prefer  that  those 
who  were  engaged  in  them  should  draw  on  their  own  stores, 
and  put  their  faculties  to  fullest  use ;  but  if  a  younger 
child  was  being  overborne  by  an  older  one,  and  he  saw  an 
eagerness  for  victory  which  was  neither  quite  courteous 
nor  generous,  he  was  wont  to  interfere  with  a  few  words 
on  behalf  of  the  weaker  side,  which,  though  they  were 
uttered  rather  suggestively  than  oracularly,  would  in  a 
moment  put  a  new  face  upon  the  whole  question.  He 
never  talked  down  to  his  children,  and  their  interest  was 
often  aroused  in  regard  to  matters  concerning  which  they 
had  been  comparatively  indifferent,  simply  because  he 
seemed  to  take  it  for  granted  that  they  would  share  his 
own  interest  in  them.  During  his  college  life  as  professor 
at  Schenectady,  it  was  his  custom  to  read  aloud  to  the 
assembled  household  for  an  hour  or  more  after  the  late 
dinner  at  the  close  of  the  day.  These  readings,  as  I  re- 


ANCESTRY:    BOYHOOD  17 

member  them,  were  generally  from  Shakespeare,  and  were 
interspersed  here  and  there  with  brief  comments  which 
showed  how  keen  was  his  enjoyment  of,  and  how  profound 
his  insight  into,  the  works  of  the  great  dramatist.  .  .  . 

"The  discipline  of  my  father's  household  was  firm  and 
decided,  and  yet,  withal,  singularly  tender  and  forbearing. 
It  had  its  penalties,  which  were  not  to  be  evaded,  and 
which  he  did  not  shrink  from  administering  with  his  own 
hand.  But  they  were  matters  of  last  resort,  and  I  doubt 
whether  any  one  of  his  children,  even  when  submitting  to 
them,  ever  seriously  questioned  that  they  were  eminently 
deserved.  On  the  other  hand,  his  praise  was  without  stint 
when  he  thought  it  had  been  fairly  earned,  and  his  ( nobly 
done,  my  son,'  after  some  boyish  effort  crowned  with  an 
unwonted  measure  of  success,  will  ring  in  my  ears  as  long 
as  I  live. 

"My  father's  somewhat  reserved  habit  of  speech,  es- 
pecially in  regard  to  matters  of  religion,  led  him  to  say  less, 
perhaps,  to  his  children  on  that  subject  than  some  more 
impulsive  men  would  have  done.  But  what  he  did  not 
say  by  word  of  mouth  he  said,  with  preeminent  tender- 
ness and  directness,  with  his  pen ;  and  always  in  his  con- 
duct of  the  family  devotion  he  seemed  intuitively  to  divine 
the  weaknesses,  the  temptations,  the  childish  needs  and 
faults  and  longings  that  waited  to  be  remembered  at  the 
mercy  seat.  His  prayers,  eminently  rich  in  their  flavor  of 
the  prayers  of  the  church,  so  braided  together  the  several 
petitions  of  the  various  collects  and  occasional  services 
as  to  be  a  very  mosaic  of  simple  and  scriptural  petitions. 
They  were  always  fresh,  heartfelt  and  comprehensive, 
yet  never  extravagant,  sentimental,  sensational  or  (as  is 
too  often  the  case)  irreverently  familiar.  ^Hien  he  did 
converse  with  one  of  his  children  on  religious  matters, 
nothing  was  more  touching  than  the  way  in  which  he  put 
himself  upon  a  level  with  the  most  timid  beginner  in  the 
Christian  life,  and  cheered  and  helped  him  by  a  sympathy 
which  seemed  to  enter  completely  into  every  feeling  of 


18  HENRY   CODMAN  POTTER 

discouragement  or  weakness  which  was  then  disclosed 
to  him. 

"My  father  had  been  early  thrown  on  his  own  resources, 
and  he  recognized  very  clearly  the  value  of  a  training 
which  educated  the  young  to  self-reliance  and  self-help. 
His  children  were  given  to  understand  that  their  educa- 
tion was  their  capital  for  the  business  of  life,  and  that 
when  they  reached  their  majority  they  must  assume  the 
responsibilities  of  independent  manhood  along  with  its 
privileges.  He  had  a  hearty  scorn  for  a  dainty  sybaritism, 
and  if  he  saw  any  symptoms  of  it  in  his  children  he  was 
wont  to  express  his  opinion  of  it  without  much  reserve. 
He  was  so  intensely  in  earnest  himself  that  he  had  scant 
sympathy  for  loungers,  idlers  or  the  mere  social  ornaments 
of  a  community,  and  in  his  own  household  this  contempt 
lighted  writh  a  withering  effect  upon  any  and  every  youth- 
ful tendency  in  that  direction. 

"Bishop  Potter  was  sometimes  called  a  cold  man,  and 
that  by  those  who  were  very  well  aware  of  the  absorbing 
personal  devotion  with  which  multitudes  of  people  loved 
him.  Under  such  circumstances  such  a  judgment  was 
curiously  unreflecting  or  unintelligent.  His  heart  was  as 
large  as  his  brain,  and  his  affections  grew  increasingly 
deep  and  tender  as  the  years  went  on.  As  his  children, 
grown  to  manhood,  passed  out  from  under  the  shelter  of 
his  paternal  roof,  they  knew  that  they  carried  with  them 
his  ceaseless  and  anxious  affection ;  and  when  they  came 
back  again  from  time  to  time  to  the  domestic  fireside,  they 
found  there  a  loving  warmth  of  welcome,  an  ever-mellowing 
benignity  of  aspect,  a  large-hearted  affectionateness  of 
interest,  which  will  live  a  fragrant  memory  forever." 


CHAPTER  II 

PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY 
1845-1857 

FOR  the  discussions  in  which  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter 
encouraged  his  sons,  the  current  events  provided  abundant 
material.  Between  1845,  when  Henry  was  brought  to 
Philadelphia  at  the  age  of  eleven,  and  1857,  when  he  was 
ordained  and  began  his  ministry,  the  years  were  filled 
with  memorable  and  significant  occurrences.  To  live  in 
such  a  time,  and  in  a  family  where  the  contemporary  his- 
tory was  followed  with  eager  interest,  was  an  educational 
discipline  of  a  high  order. 

In  1848,  almost  every  European  nation  was  in  peril 
of  revolution.  Louis  Philippe  was  driven  out  of  Paris, 
the  Emperor  Ferdinand  fled  from  Vienna,  the  soldiers 
of  Austria  were  forced  to  leave  Milan,  in  Berlin  the  people 
were  against  the  crown,  in  London  the  Chartists  were 
assembling  a  huge  procession  to  carry  their  Bill  of  Rights 
to  Parliament.  In  1852,  Louis  Napoleon  became  Emperor 
of  the  French.  In  1853,  the  Emperor  of  the  French,  on 
behalf  of  the  Latin  Church,  and  the  Czar  of  Russia,  on 
behalf  of  the  Greek  Church,  entered  into  a  contention 
concerning  the  custody  of  the  holy  places  of  Jerusalem. 
On  the  one  side  and  on  the  other  they  made  opposing  and 
irreconcilable  demands  upon  the  ruler  of  the  city,  the 
Sultan  of  Turkey.  The  Turks  and  the  Russians  fell  to 
fighting,  France  and  England  took  the  Turkish  side,  and 
the  Crimean  War  ensued.  It  lasted  until  1856.  In  1857, 
the  Sepoys  rebelled,  and  the  Indian  Mutiny  followed. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  United  States,  the  debate  about 
slavery  was  bringing  the  nation  nearer  and  nearer  to  the 

19 


20  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Civil  War.  The  enforcement  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law 
of  1850  sent  slave  owners,  whip  in  hand,  into  northern 
States  to  recover  their  property.  The  Kansas-Nebraska 
Act  of  1854,  permitting  these  new  territories  to  choose  by 
popular  vote  whether  they  would  be  free  soil  or  not.  and 
thus  defying  the  Missouri  Compromise,  which  had  definitely 
limited  the  area  of  slavery,  added  fuel  to  the  increasing 
flames.  In  1857,  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
in  the  Dred  Scott  Decision,  announced  that  no  slave, 
nor  descendant  of  a  slave,  could  be  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States  or  have  any  standing  in  the  federal  courts.  These 
matters  were  discussed  with  serious  interest  in  Philadelphia, 
where  already  the  American  Anti-Slavery  Society  had  been 
organized,  and  where  in  1856  the  Republican  party  held 
its  first  national  convention.  In  the  Virginia  Seminary, 
as  we  shall  presently  see,  Henry  Potter  heard  the  question 
of  slavery  debated  between  young  men  of  the  north  and 
young  men  of  the  south,  and  took  part  in  the  debates. 

Not  only  the  political  but  the  ecclesiastical  world  was 
perturbed.  It  was  in  1845  that  Newman  was  formally 
received  into  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  the  Trac- 
tarian  Controversy  was  at  flood  tide.  The  church  was 
divided  into  contending  parties,  "Low"  and  "High." 
Each  was  seriously  afraid  of  the  influence  of  the  other, 
and  each  believed  with  equal  gravity  that  its  opponents 
were  disloyal  to  the  spirit  of  the  church.  In  this  dissension 
Bishop  Potter  maintained  a  position,  then  somewhat  rare, 
but  now  happily  common,  in  which  he  held  that  both  of 
these  interpretations  of  religion  have  their  rightful  place 
in  the  church.  In  the  face  of  the  current  partisanship, 
he  was  a  comprehensive  churchman.  His  generous  sym- 
pathies extended  in  both  directions.  He  desired  to  see 
the  growth  of  a  churchmanship  which  should  be  at  the 
same  time  catholic  and  evangelical,  "combining  honest, 
earnest  loyalty  to  the  peculiarities  of  our  communion  with 
a  loyalty  still  more  earnest  to  the  peculiarities  of  the  gospel." 

In  the  progress  of  these  domestic  discussions,  thus  tend- 


PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  21 

ing  in  various  ways  to  impart  to  the  mind  of  a  young  man 
a  lively  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  world,  and  an  enthusiasm 
for  liberty,  social  and  ecclesiastical,  Henry  Potter  was 
entering  into  manhood. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  his  father,  on  becoming  Bishop 
of  Pennsylvania,  had  been  to  revive  the  Episcopal  Academy. 
This  school  had  been  founded  half  a  century  before  in 
the  days  of  Bishop  White,  but  in  1846  it  had  long  been 
without  either  students  or  teachers  or  building.  Bishop 
Potter,  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  caused  it  to  be  reopened, 
and  secured  as  master  the  Rev.  Dr.  George  Emlen  Hare. 
Dr.  Hare  had  been  a  temporary  professor  in  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania.  His  learning  and  ability  were  recog- 
nized in  1862  by  his  appointment  as  dean  and  professor 
of  Biblical  Exegesis  in  the  divinity  school  then  established 
in  Philadelphia ;  and  in  1870  by  his  selection  by  the  Con- 
vocation of  Canterbury  to  assist  in  the  preparation  of  the 
Revised  Version  of  the  Bible.  It  is  said  of  him,  in  the 
"Life  and  Labors  of  Bishop  Hare,"  his  son,  that  "from 
the  day  of  his  ordination  the  Scriptures  in  their  original 
texts  had  never  been  half  a  day  out  of  his  hands."  He  is 
described  as  "a  typical  figure  of  the  scholar,  formal,  re- 
mote, known  of  those  who  knew  him  as  demanding  of 
himself  the  same  exacting  standard  of  industry  and  in- 
tegrity that  he  demanded  of  his  pupils."  Dr.  J.  Andrews 
Harris  remembers  Henry  Potter  as  a  bright  lad  in  this 
school,  standing  well  in  his  classes,  and  of  a  merry  dis- 
position. 

The  Bishop's  son  appeared  at  first  to  have  no  desire 
to  follow  in  his  father's  steps.  He  had  no  share  in  the 
instruction  which  Dr.  Hare  was  giving  at  the  Academy 
an  hour  daily,  for  five  days  in  the  week,  in  Greek  and 
Hebrew,  to  candidates  for  the  ministry.  There  is  no 
reference  in  the  family  records  to  any  intention  to  send 
Henry  to  Union  College.  His  brother  Clarkson  had  been 
graduated  there  in  1842,  Howard  in  1846,  Edward  in 
1853 ;  his  younger  brother  Eliphalet  entered  Union  in, 


22  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  year  in  which  Henry  was  ordained  deacon.  Henry 
went  into  business.  In  his  nineteenth  year  he  was  in 
the  employ  of  the  wholesale  dry-goods  house  of  Ludwig, 
Kweeder  &  Co.  in  North  Third  Street. 

In  that  year,  however,  —  in  August,  1854,  —  he  entered 
into  an  experience  which  was  then  expected  as  a  stage  in 
the  spiritual  progress  of  every  normal  Christian  —  he  was 
converted. 

His  father  wrote  :  "I  have  been  delighted  beyond  measure 
to  hear  from  your  mother  that  your  heart  seems  to  have 
been  touched  by  God's  Spirit  with  true  contrition,  and 
that  you  have  gone  for  refuge  to  the  Blood  that  cleanseth 
from  all  sin.  May  it  be  so  indeed,  and  may  you  the  rest 
of  your  days  be  a  true  soldier  of  the  cross,  and  deem  it 
your  highest  glory  to  live  for  Him  who  hath  loved  you 
with  such  wonderful  love  !  I  have  been  of  late  more  than 
ever  grieved  at  the  absence  from  my  children  of  any  deep 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  their  souls,  and  I  cannot  but 
fondly  hope  that  this  may  be  the  beginning  of  a  better  and 
brighter  era  with  them  all." 

Henry  Potter  wrote  a  letter  upon  this  occasion  to  his 
sister  and  to  each  of  his  brothers.  "I  remember  receiving 
mine,"  says  Mrs.  Thompson,  "and  being  a  little  frightened, 
as  children  are  too  apt  to  be,  I  think,  by  any  direct  appeal 
in  regard  to  religion.  I  remember  its  solemn,  affectionate 
tone." 

To  the  same  period  belongs  an  anecdote  which  was 
much  repeated  and  appreciated  in  the  family  to  the  effect 
that  "while  he  was  preparing  to  go  to  the  Seminary  there 
was  a  discussion  one  day  among  the  elders  —  uncles  and 
aunts  —  as  to  whether  he  would  hold  fast  or  slip  back 
to  the  life  of  the  world,  and  it  was  brought  to  an  end  by 
one  of  the  old  ladies  who  said:  'No,  I  am  convinced  that 
he  will  stand  fast,  and  that  his  religion  is  not  the  mood  of 
a  moment.  There  is  a  radical  change  in  him.  He  used 
to  be  very  careless,  and  not  mind  how  much  trouble  he 
gave  to  the  servants.  Now,  he  puts  everything  away 


PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  23 

carefully,  and  does  not  throw  his  boots  out  at  night,  but 
puts  them  very  neatly  side  by  side.'7 

The  coincidence  of  a  new  habit  of  neatness  with  a  new 
spirit  of  religion  is  not  uncommon  in  the  experience  of 
youth.  It  is  frequently  connected  with  the  beginning 
of  a  new  friendship.  The  new  friends  who  came  at  this 
time  into  Henry  Potter's  life  lived  at  Spring  Grove,  in 
Lancaster  County,  Pennsylvania,  fifty  miles  from  Phila- 
delphia. 

Mrs.  Clara  Sidney  (Boyd)  Jacobs,  widow  of  Samuel 
Jacobs,  had  inherited  from  her  husband  an  iron  mine  and 
a  forge.  Cyrus  Jacobs,  her  husband's  father,  had  been 
a  great  iron  master  in  his  day.  The  social  conditions  at 
Spring  Grove  were  of  the  patriarchal  order.  The  houses 
of  the  workmen,  sheltering  some  fifty  families,  were  built 
around  the  forge;  the  great  house  "of  the  wide-porched, 
stone  and  stucco,  pine-shaded  type,  with  pillars,  broad  hall, 
box-bordered  rose  gardens,  and  solid  comfort,"  overlooked 
a  fair  valley  through  wThich  flowed  a  little  river.  Airs. 
Jacobs  was  not  only  the  proprietor  and  general  manager, 
but,  on  occasion,  the  teacher,  the  doctor  and  the  minister 
of  the  community.  She  instructed  the  children,  advised 
their  parents,  dispensed  medicines  for  their  simple  ailments, 
and  in  a  building  detached  from  the  main  house,  and  called 
the  "office,"  she  read  the  family  prayers  and  had  a  Sunday 
School.  Every  Episcopal  parson  who  passed  by  that  way 
stopped  to  enjoy  the  gracious  hospitality  of  Mrs.  Jacobs. 
She  wTas  good  as  she  was  capable,  pious,  devout,  living  as 
naturally  in  the  atmosphere  of  religion  as  in  the  pure  air 
of  the  surrounding  woods. 

The  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania  and  his  family  were  welcome 
guests  at  Spring  Grove.  The  boys,  who  used  to  sit  on  the 
steps  of  their  father's  house  reviling  Spruce  street  and 
comparing  Philadelphia  very  unfavorably  with  Schenectady, 
spent  weeks  of  their  summer  holidays  in  the  delightful 
freedom  of  the  big  estate.  To  Eliza  Rogers  Jacobs  (6.  1832) 
Henry  Potter  became  engaged  to  be  married.  To  the  in- 


24  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

fluence  of  her  mother  he  attributed  the  turning  of  his  mind 
in  the  direction  of  religion.  His  interests  had  been  mostly 
social.  His  uncommonly  handsome  face,  and  his  engaging 
manners,  had  made  him  —  as,  indeed,  he  always  continued 
to  be  —  a  favorite  in  society.  All  the  Philadelphia  girls 
-  and  their  brothers  also  —  liked  him.  He  had  all  the 
qualifications  for  successful  secularity.  He  afterwards 
spoke  of  himself  at  this  time  as  a  "wayward  youth,"  and 
as  such  he  probably  appeared  to  his  evangelical  father,  and 
to  his  anxious  aunts  and  uncles.  Mrs.  Jacobs  changed 
his  whole  life. 

This  was  the  "touch  of  another  hand"  to  which,  long 
after,  he  referred  at  the  end  of  a  sermon  in  memory  of 
the  Bishop  Howe  who  wrote  his  father's  life,  and  whose 
church,  while  Dr.  Howe  was  the  rector  of  St.  Luke's  in 
Philadelphia,  he  attended  as  a  lad.  "A  wayward  youth," 
he  says,  "sitting  once  in  St.  Luke's  Church  in  Philadelphia, 
hears  the  man  who  was  your  first  bishop  preach  a  sermon 
from  the  text  'Young  man,  I  say  unto  thee,  Arise!'  Its 
impression  never  left  him  —  the  clear,  close,  faithful  mes- 
sage, searching,  personal,  awakening,  starting  in  him  a 
train  of  thought  and  emotion  that,  touched  later  by  another 
hand,  changed  the  whole  current  of  his  life.  It  is  not 
violating  the  most  delicate  reserve  if  he  recalls  that  debt 
to-day,  and  owns  that  he  has  been  glad  and  thankful  for 
the  privilege  of  coming  here  and  laying  thus  the  tribute  of 
his  love  and  gratitude  upon  your  bishop's  grave." 

The  Virginia  Theological  Seminary,  in  which  Henry 
Potter  now  took  up  his  residence,  had  been  founded  at 
Alexandria  in  1823,  the  year  after  the  opening  of  the  General 
Theological  Seminary  in  Xew  York.  The  founders  had  in 
mind  the  convenience  of  students,  especially  such  as  lived 
in  the  south,  for  whom  a  journey  to  New  York  in  those 
days  of  difficult  travel  seemed  impossible.  They  were 
also  opposed  to  the  idea  of  a  general  seminary,  feeling 
that  the  church  would  be  better  served  by  diocesan  train- 
ing schools.  In  this  opinion  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter  shared, 


PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  25 

and  presently  carried  it  into  practical  effect  by  starting 
a_  divinity  school  of  his  own  in  Philadelphia.  There  was 
no  intention  to  make  the  Virginia  school  a  recruiting  station 
for  the  low-church  party,  but  as  the  years  passed  the  two 
schools  had  come  to  represent  the  two  varieties  of  church- 
manship.  Between  the  two,  Bishop  Potter  chose  the 
Virginia  Seminary  for  his  son,  though  not  without  mis- 
givings. He  feared  the  narrowing  influences  of  partisan 
churchmanship. 

Thus  he  wrote  to  Henry  shortly  after  the  beginning  of 
his  first  term:  "I  have  been  wishing  to  write  to  you  for 
weeks,  but  I  am  so  little  at  home  and  so  incessantly  oc- 
cupied when  travelling  with  my  duties  and  necessary 
correspondence  that  no  letters  are  written  which  are  not 
indispensable.  I  hear  most  encouraging  reports  of  your 
bearing  and  deportment.  May  God  give  you  grace  to 
persevere  and  to  be  always  honest  with  Him  and  with 
yourself.  We  can  so  easily  deceive  ourselves,  and  the 
approaches  of  evil  are  so  insidious  and  so  multiform  that 
'watch  and  pray'  is  the  safe  motto.  At  the  same  time, 
strive  to  be  a  happy  and  cheerful  Christian,  for  'we  have 
received  not  the  spirit  of  bondage  again  to  fear,  but  the 
spirit  of  adoption.' 

"  I  have  a  little  concern  on  two  points :  First,  lest  you 
crowd  too  many  studies  on  each  day,  a  course  dangerous 
to  health  of  body  and  health  of  mind.  Multum,  not  multa 
—  a  few  books,  a  few  studies,  well  digested,  at  a  time,  is 
the  true  course. 

"Second,  lest  the  type  of  your  theology  and  piety  be 
narrow.  A  tendency  to  narrowness,  to  party  views  and 
censorious  judgment  of  those  who  differ  from  us,  is  one 
of  the  dangers  of  our  profession,  and  I  have  noticed  more 

of  it  than  I  could  wish  among  the  graduates  of .  There 

are  few  things  which  I  would  cultivate  more  assiduously 
and  anxiously  than  the  ability  to  see  and  to  appreciate 
good  in  all  classes  of  men,  as  far  as  they  have  it,  and  to 
use  charity  in  all  our  surmises  respecting  their  motives. 


26  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

All  this  I  hold  to  be  perfectly  consistent  with  fixed  opinions 
and  unwavering  loyalty  to  them." 

The  Virginia  Seminary,  which  Henry  Potter  entered  in 
the  autumn  of  1854,  was  even  more  beautiful  for  situa- 
tion than  it  is  at  present,  for  not  only  did  it  look  out  over 
the  Potomac  toward  the  spires  and  towers  of  Washington 
in  the  distance,  but  it  was  in  the  midst  of  a  primeval  forest. 
Phillips  Brooks,  who  entered  the  school  in  1856,  found 
it  a  "lonely,  desolate  sort  of  place."  But  he  was  home- 
sick, and  was  contrasting  Alexandria  with  Boston,  and 
the  Seminary  with  Harvard  College.  He  had  arrived 
some  weeks  after  the  beginning  of  the  term,  and  had  been 
assigned  to  the  only  vacant  room  remaining,  in  which 
he  found  it  difficult  to  stand  up  straight,  under  the  eaves. 
"My  homely  apartment,"  he  wrote,  "is  in  an  old  build- 
ing called  the  Wilderness."  "'Tis  an  awkward  thing," 
he  adds,  "this  living  in  a  garret."  Even  in  this  mood 
of  depression  and  depreciation  he  says,  "There  seem  to 
be  some  fine  fellows  here.  They  are  very  hospitable, 
and  would  kill  me  with  kindness  if  I  would  stand  it."  And 
he  particularly  mentions  "a  son  of  Bishop  Potter,  who 
seems  to  be  a  splendid  fellow ;  at  any  rate,  he's  mighty 
handsome." 

Below  Brooks,  in  his  attic  room,  were  Charles  A.  L. 
Richards  and  his  brother  George  A.  Strong,  who  entered 
in  1855.  "As  a  new  student,"  says  Dr.  Richards,  "a 
room  in  the  third  story  at  the  rear  of  the  main  building 
had  been  assigned  to  me  which  Potter  had  occupied  the 
year  before.  He  had  left  a  trunk  there,  which  the  authori- 
ties had  removed  elsewhere  before  my  arrival.  Return- 
ing a  little  later,  he  came  to  my  door  to  claim  his  property, 
of  which  I  could  only  say  that  I  knew  nothing.  As  the 
tall,  handsome,  well-groomed  young  man,  with  quite  an 
air  to  him,  seemed  disposed  to  question  that  statement, 
us  if  I  might  somehow  have,  overlooked  the  trunk,  I  asked 
him  as  mildly  as  I  could  if  he  would  like  to  examine  the 
closet  or  look  under  the  bed.  He  declined  the  offer  and 


PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  27 

went  downstairs  to  inquire  who  that  satirical  fellow  was 
in  his  old  quarters,  and  what  had  become  of  his  trunk. 
We  were  presently  on  such  comfortable  terms  as  to  laugh 
over  the  interview,  and  some  reference  to  the  story  was 
apt  to  turn  up  in  our  talk  for  years  afterwards." 

The  seminary  life  was  one  of  primitive  simplicity.  The 
days  had  indeed  gone  by  when  the  students,  as  Dr.  Packard 
said,  had  all  things  in  common,  like  the  early  Christians  — 
"a  common  woodpile,  where  each  sawed  his  wood  and 
carried  it  to  his  room ;  a  common  cruse  of  oil,  where  each 
freely  helped  himself."  Phillips  Brooks  bought  half  a 
cord  of  wood  for  three  dollars,  and  meditated  buying  a 
new  stove  in  which  he  threatened  to  burn  coal.  The 
annual  bill  for  board  had  advanced  from  seventy-five  dol- 
lars to  a  hundred.  But  the  rooms  were  still  plain,  the 
furniture  did  not  provide  for  more  than  the  necessities  of 
life,  and  the  fare  was  meagre.  There  had  been  a  time 
when  the  students  had  formally  protested  against  an  undue 
limitation  in  the  amount  of  dried  apples,  and  even  in  Brooks's 
day  he  is  found  complaining  of  a  monotony  of  tomato  pies 
and  boiled  rice. 

The  social  pleasures  of  the  place  were  few.  "It  was 
understood,"  says  Dr.  Richards,  "that  we  were  always 
welcome  at  the  houses  of  the  professors.  Once  or  twice 
a  year,  perhaps,  we  used  our  privilege.  It  was  our  chief 
dissipation.  As  the  chairs  wrere  pushed  back  from  the 
tea-table,  we  sat  in  our  places,  family  prayers  followed, 
and  the  discreet  did  not  linger  too  long  after  the  benedic- 
tion. The  roads  were  dark,  the  mud  was  deep,  the  dogs 
loud-mouthed,  the  neighbors  scattered,  and  we  saw  little 
of  them.  It  was  pure  cloistral  life,  for  the  most  part." 

In  the  midst  of  these  discomforts  and  disadvantages, 
most  of  which  belonged  not  to  Alexandria  only  but  to  the 
simple  life  of  that  generation,  there  was  an  indefinable 
quality  in  the  place  which  imparted  itself  to  the  young 
men  who  studied  there.  Bishop  Bedell  bore  witness  to 
it  when  he  said,  "I  never  again  expect  to  rest  my  weari- 


28  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

ness  on  a  spot  of  earth  which  will  appear  so  much  in  the 
neighborhood  of  heaven.  It  always  seems  to  me  in  recol- 
lection a  land  of  Beulah,  a  little  way  to  the  fords  of  the 
river  and  the  gates  beyond,  where  the  angels  keep  their 
guard." 

This  was  due  in  part  to  the  teaching,  but  still  more  to 
the  personality,  of  the  three  professors. 

Phillips  Brooks  himself  said  of  Dr.  William  Sparrow, 
who  taught  theology  there:  "His  intellectual  and  spiritual 
life  seems  to  me,  as  I  look  back  upon  him,  to  have  been 
mingled  in  singular  harmony,  and  to  have  made  but  one 
nature  as  they  do  in  few  men.  The  best  result  of  his  work 
in  influence  on  any  student's  life  and  ministry  must  have 
been  to  save  him  from  the  hardness  on  the  one  hand,  or 
the  weakness  on  the  other,  which  purely  intellectual  or 
purely  spiritual  training  would  have  produced.  His  very 
presence  on  the  Hill  was  rich  and  salutary.  .  .  .  He 
loved  ideas,  and  did  all  he  could  to  make  his  students  love 
them.  .  .  .  On  the  whole  he  is  one  of  the  three  or  four 
men  whom  I  have  known  whom  I  look  back  upon  with 
perpetual  gratitude  for  the  help  and  direction  which  they 
have  given  to  my  life." 

Dr.  Richards  describes  Dr.  Packard,  who  taught  the 
interpretation  of  the  Bible,  as  "an  old-fashioned  scholar, 
who  knew  what  had  been  said  on  the  knotty  points  of  his 
Greek  and  his  Hebrew,  but  reserved  his  own  opinion,  hold- 
ing it  in  such  delicate  equipoise  as  to  avoid  biassing  the 
minds  of  his  students  by  any  definite  hint  of  it,  unless  a 
question  involving  orthodoxy  came  before  him,  when  the 
scales  gently  descended  on  the  accepted  side." 

When  Bishop  Potter  was  making  some  anxious  inquiries 
about  the  seminary,  fearing  that  it  might  make  his  son  a 
narrow  churchman,  he  asked  a  friend  to  put  some  ques- 
tions to  Dr.  James  May,  the  professor  of  ecclesiastical 
history.  "I  return  you  Dr.  May's  letters,"  he  wrote  to 
his  friend,  "which  I  have  read  with  the  greatest  pleasure. 
What  an  admirable  spirit  !  Would  that  I  had  it  in  larger 


PREPARATION    FOR   THE    MINISTRY  29 

measure,  and  that  it  could  be  infused  into  all  our  candi- 
dates for  orders  !" 

These  affectionate  descriptions  reveal  the  seminary  of 
Henry  Potter's  time  as  a  place  pervaded  by  the  warmth 
of  religion,  where  men  of  a  kindly  and  sympathetic  spirit, 
—  conscientious,  studious,  and  saintly  persons,  —  were 
teaching  a  reasonable  theology.  They  "loved  ideas." 
They  encouraged  their  pupils  to  make  up  their  own  minds. 
"The  scales  gently  descended  on  the  accepted  side:"  so 
much  the  better.  The  innate  radicalism  of  youth  auto- 
matically corrects  the  prudent  conservatism  of  theological 
professors. 

Every  Thursday  evening,  in  Prayer  Hall,  the  three 
teachers  met  the  students  for  a  conference  upon  the  things 
of  the  spirit.  The  meeting  began  with  prayer,  after  which 
each  professor  spoke  in  turn,  giving  an  instruction  or  a 
meditation.  It  was  an  exercise,  then  as  now  distinctive 
of  the  school,  which  brought  the  faculty  into  a  pastoral 
relation  with  the  students.  The  men  who  conducted  it 
spoke  not  as  lecturers  nor  as  the  judges  of  a  recitation, 
but  as  Christian  believers  conversing  with  their  younger 
brethren.  The  influence  of  these  meetings  upon  the  stu- 
dents was  deep  and  abiding. 

Recalling  them  long  after  in  a  letter  to  Dean  Crawford, 
Henry  Potter  found  their  value  to  consist  mainly  in  the 
fact  that  "they  were  devotional,  rather  than  theological, 
historical,  exegetical  or  controversial.  Men  whose  studies 
compelled  them  to  be  familiar  with  much  that  was  tragic, 
painful  and  often  critical,  in  the  history  of  the  church, 
were  immensely  refreshed  by  finding  themselves  on  Thurs- 
day evenings  in  an  atmosphere  which  lifted  them  to  higher 
levels."  The  fact  that  they  were  conducted  by  three  men, 
each  from  his  own  point  of  view,  each  out  of  his  individual 
experience,  emphasized  the  personal  note.  The  words 
that  were  spoken  inspired  the  hearers  because  they  disclosed 
"a  consecrated  spirit  and  a  high  and  august  purpose." 

The  "Faculty  Meetings,"  as  these  assemblies  were  called, 


30  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

gave  the  students  some  measure  of  that  pastoral  care  which 
is  curiously  lacking  in  the  lives  of  most  men  who  are  pre- 
paring for  the  ministry.  The  theological  student  goes 
out  into  his  work  having  had  much  experience  of  instruc- 
tion but  very  little  experience  of  exhortation  and  counsel. 
He  starts  upon  a  round  of  pastoral  visits  without  ever 
having  been  pastorally  visited  himself.  It  has  been  taken 
for  granted  that  he  is  caring  for  his  own  soul.  A  certain 
evangelical  flavor  and  warmth  of  personal  religion  in  men 
trained  in  the  Virginia  Seminary  may  be  traced  not  only 
to  the  kind  of  churchmanship  which  has  always  prevailed 
there,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  students  have  been  regarded 
not  only  as  pupils  in  a  school  but  as  members  of  a  parish 
in  which  the  instructors  are  the  responsible  ministers. 
Henry  Potter  was  directed  and  encouraged,  and  his  life 
deepened  and  enriched,  by  being  preached  to  and  prayed 
with  in  the  Faculty  Meeting.  There  he  found,  as  he  said 
afterwards,  a  ministry  of  power  "supremely  strong  in 
sympathy,  tenderness  and  self-sacrifice." 

On  Saturday  evenings  there  was  a  prayer  meeting  of 
the  students,  each  class  by  itself ;  and  each  member  of  the 
class  took  his  turn  in  leading  it.  The  prayers  were  ex- 
temporaneous, and  the  meetings  encouraged  and  trained 
men  in  religious  self-expression. 

On  Sundays  "it  was  the  admirable  custom  to  assign 
students  to  mission  stations  at  a  convenient  distance  — 
varying  from  two  to  five  miles  —  from  the  seminary." 
Dr.  Richards  remembers  that  during  his  last  year  in  the 
seminary  Henry  Potter  had  a  Bible  class  of  young  women 
at  Christ  Church,  Alexandria,  where  he  also  assisted  the 
rector  by  reading  the  service.  Miss  Sally  Stuart  of  Alex- 
andria, the  single  survivor  of  that  class,  at  whose  house 
the  ten  girls  met  for  their  lessons,  remembers  the  outlines 
which  the  young  teacher  prepared,  and  the  careful  ques- 
tions which  he  asked.  She  remembers  also  how  the  class 
questioned  the  teacher.  They  were  well  educated  young 
persons,  who  were  aware  that  he  was  not  a  college  graduate  ; 


PREPARATION  FOR  THE   MINISTRY  31 

they  greatly  admired  his  personal  appearance,  but  they 
did  not  stand  in  awe  of  him.  "We  often  stumped  him," 
says  Miss  Stuart;  "he  would  say  'I'll  answer  next  week.": 
He  required  them  to  prepare  papers  on  assigned  subjects, 
—  "to  save  himself  the  trouble  of  writing  sermons,"  they 
said.  He  used  to  say  of  Miss  Stuart,  when  he  met  her 
years  afterwards  at  General  Conventions,  and  introduced 
her  to  his  friends,  "I  taught  her  all  the  Bible  she  ever 
knew."  To  which  Miss  Stuart  always  replied,  "All  the 
Bible  he  ever  knew,  he  learned  by  looking  up  the  answers 
to  our  questions." 

In  the  summer  of  1856,  Henry  Potter  served  as  a  lay- 
reader  in  the  little  new  parish  of  Mont  Alto,  in  Franklin 
County,  Pennsylvania,  near  the  Maryland  line.  Iron 
works  had  been  set  up  there,  and  the  owner  had  given  an 
acre  of  land  for  a  church.  This  had  been  consecrated  in 
1854,  at  which  time  the  services  "occupied  some  five  hours, 
and  were  participated  in  with  great  interest  and  attention 
by  a  numerous  crowd  of  persons." 

The  lay-reader  took  the  superintendence  of  the  Sunday 
School,  organized  a  choir,  and  began  cottage  lectures  in 
the  outlying  farmhouses,  where  he  preached  his  own 
sermons.  A  log-house  in  the  yard  of  one  of  his  parishioners 
contained  his  study  and  bedroom. 

Writing  in  1865,  he  said,  "Few  places  can  have  more 
attraction  for  me  than  Mont  Alto.  I  look  back  when  I 
remember  my  summer  with  you  to  some  of  the  brightest 
memories  of  my  life.  Everything  that  is  tender  and  sacred 
clusters  about  my  recollections  of  your  little  chapel,  and 
of  my  days  of  happy  retirement  with  you  all." 

Long  after,  in  the  year  before  he  died,  he  attended  an 
annual  convention  of  the  Diocese  of  Harrisburg,  and, 
declining  the  place  of  state  which  was  offered  him,  asked 
permission  to  be  enrolled  as  a  delegate  from  Mont  Alto. 
There  he  sat  throughout  the  day,  taking  part  in  the  busi- 
ness of  the  session,  voting  as  a  representative  of  Emmanuel 
Chapel.  So  well-known  and  long-continued  was  his  af- 


32  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

fection  for  Mont  Alto  that  after  his  death  Mrs.  Potter 
sent  a  gift  of  money  to  the  minister  then  in  charge  there, 
in  memory  of  the  old  days. 

Thus  passed  the  quiet  and  fruitful  years  of  that  cloistered 
life.  "I  am  beginning  to  buck  into  Hebrew  pretty  slowly," 
wrote  Phillips  Brooks  at  that  time,  "and  like  it  extremely. 
It  is  the  queerest  old  language  I  ever  saw."  Henry  Potter 
was  having  the  same  experience.  "In  the  chapel/'  says  Dr. 
Richards,  "the  ritual  was  simple  to  barrenness.  The  music 
was  a  repeated  martyrdom  of  St.  Cecilia."  Dr.  Packard 
remembered  that  at  the  commencement  service  in  1856 
"the  chants  were  given  by  the  students  in  Hebrew,  Greek 
and  Latin,  and  it  was  thought  that  they  sounded  beauti- 
fully." About  that  time  Bishop  Meade  vigorously  took 
in  hand  what  seemed  to  him  the  beginning  of  the  peril 
of  Puseyism  in  the  school.  "After  the  chapel  was  built 
at  the  seminary  the  pews,  as  designed  by  the  architect, 
were  finished  with  a  cross  at  the  top  of  the  pew  end.  They 
stood  so  for  some  time  when  on  one  of  his  visits  they  struck 
him  unpleasantly,  and  he  ordered  them  to  be  sawed  off. 
This  was  done,  and  the  chapel  was  a  scene  of  direful  de- 
struction, with  these  crosses  covering  the  floor.  Strange 
to  say,  in  the  psalter  the  Sunday  after  this  was  done,  was 
the  verse  'They  brake  down  all  the  carved  work  thereof 
with  axes  and  hammers." 

Meanwhile,  the  near  neighborhood  of  Washington,  the 
election  of  Buchanan  by  the  Democrats  in  1856,  and  the 
presence  in  the  seminary  of  northern  and  southern  men 
in  about  equal  numbers,  gave  occasion  to  continual  de- 
bate on  the  political  situation.  In  December,  1856,  the 
slavery  question  was  discussed  in  Prayer  Hall.  It  was 
impossible,  even  in  the  seclusion  of  the  seminary,  to  con- 
sider the  matter  dispassionately.  One  northern  student, 
who  had  "held  a  meeting  once  a  week  for  the  servants  of 
the  seminary  and  the  neighbors,  received  notice  that  it 
must  be  given  up."  Another  who  had  been  preaching 
either  to  the  negroes  or  about  them  was  threatened  with 


PREPARATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  33 

a  coat  of  tar  and  feathers.  These  objections  came  from 
people  in  the  village,  who  were  fearful  lest  the  northern 
seminarians  should  stir  up  a  slave  insurrection. 

In  the  midst  of  these  influences,  in  this  place  of  study 
and  prayer  and  political  debate,  Henry  Potter  was  made 
ready  for  his  ministry.  "He  interested  me,"  said  Dr. 
Richards,  "by  his  attractive  face  and  pleasant  manners, 
his  sunny  temper,  his  playful  humor,  his  tact  and  kind- 
ness, his  sense  and  judgment,  his  freedom  from  cant,  his 
broad  and  thoughtful  religion.  We  found  ourselves  in  a 
somewhat  narrow,  evangelical  atmosphere,  so  far  as  our 
fellow-students  were  concerned,  were  neither  of  us  quite 
ready  to  be  labelled  prematurely,  and  so  were  drawn  much 
together.  He  had  been  in  business,  I  had  studied  and 
practised  as  a  doctor,  and  perhaps  we  fancied  we  knew 
more  of  the  world  and  of  men  than  most  of  our  cloistered 
companions,  whose  life  had  gone  from  school  to  college, 
and  from  college  to  seminary." 

Long  after,  in  the  midst  of  his  episcopate,  Henry  Potter 
recalled  a  single  incident  of  these  preparatory  days.  He 
was  in  New  York,  he  said,  on  the  Feast  of  the  Epiphany, 
and  attended  a  service  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. The  offering,  he  noticed,  was  made  all  in  gold, 
after  the  example  of  the  Wise  Men.  And  Dr.  Muhlenberg 
preached  on  missions.  "I  remember  the  vigor  of  that 
picturesque  figure,  a  man  whose  enthusiasm  was  so  pure, 
so  vibrant,  that  it  caught  the  young  mind  up  into  a  state 
of  interest  in  missions,  and  made  an  impression  never  to 
be  effaced."  Thus  he  came  into  relation  with  the  man 
who  more  than  any  other,  except  his  own  father,  was  the 
pattern  of  his  ministry. 

In  1857  these  preparatory  years  were  ended.  He  was 
ordained  deacon  on  the  27th  of  May,  in  St.  Luke's  Church, 
Philadelphia.  In  the  little  New  Testament  which  his  father 
gave  him  that  day  he  recorded  the  date  of  his  ordination, 
and  added  the  text,  "Preach  the  word."  He  was  sent  to 
take  charge  of  the  church  at  Greensburg,  Pennsylvania. 


CHAPTER  III 

IN   A   COUNTRY   PARISH 

1857-1859 

THE  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania,  in  sending  his  son  to  Greens- 
burg,  forestalled  any  possible  charge  of  favoritism.  The 
little  parish  lay  beyond  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  and 
seemed  almost  as  remote  as  a  mission  station  of  the  present 
time  beyond  the  Rockies.  General  John  Forbes  had  passed 
that  way  in  1758  on  his  march  to  Fort  Duquesne,  cutting  a 
road  through  the  woods  from  east  to  west.  Greensburg 
had  grown  up  at  the  place  where  this  road  was  crossed  by 
an  ancient  Indian  trail.  Pittsburgh,  which  had  arisen  on 
the  site  of  the  French  fort,  wras  thirty  miles  beyond.  The 
village  was  visited  in  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century  by  observant  travellers,  who  admired  its  situa- 
tion on  a  gentle  hill  in  the  midst  of  a  fertile  undulating 
country,  and  found  refreshment  at  the  tavern  of  the  Seven 
Stars.  Even  in  1809,  a  prominent  building  in  the  place 
was  the  Presbyterian  Church.  In  1852,  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  came  by,  on  its  way  from  Philadelphia  to  Pitts- 
burgh. 

The  Rev.  Joseph  Doddridge,  who  was  gathering  con- 
gregations together  for  prayer-book  worship  in  Western 
Pennsylvania  early  in  the  century,  estimated  that  "at 
least  one-half  of  the  population  was  originally  of  Epis- 
copalian parentage."  But  he  was  so  alone  in  his  minis- 
trations that  in  1818  he  "entertained  no  hope  that  even 
(his)  own  remains  after  death  would  be  committed  to  the 
dust  with  the  funeral  services  of  (his)  own  church."  In 
February,  1819,  Bishop  Philander  Chase,  having  been 

34 


IN   A   COUNTRY   PARISH  35 

consecrated  in  Philadelphia,  journeyed  on  horseback  through 
Greensburg  and  Pittsburgh,  and  was  the  first  bishop  ever 
seen  in  those  parts ;  but  he  was  on  his  way  to  Ohio.  Bishop 
White  made  his  single  visitation  to  that  part  of  his  dio- 
cese in  1825.  He  found  five  parishes  —  in  Pittsburgh,  in 
Meadville,  in  Brownsville,  in  Franklin,  and  in  Greens- 
burg.  Meanwhile,  Methodist  circuit-riders  were  traversing 
the  country,  preaching  in  the  clearings  in  the  forest,  and 
Presbyterians  were  building  churches  out  of  logs.  The 
Episcopal  Church  was  taking  so  small  a  part  in  the  settle- 
ment of  the  lands  beyond  the  Alleghenies  as  to  be  a  neg- 
ligible factor. 

The  sending  of  Henry  Potter  to  Greensburg  in  1857 
indicated  a  new  interest  in  the  extension  of  the  Church. 
It  was  an  incident  in  a  general  awakening  of  missionary 
effort. 

An  Anglican  tradition  of  ecclesiastical  dignity  had  made 
conservative  churchmen  hesitate  to  undertake  the  rough 
work  of  the  frontier.  They  had  inherited  the  disposition 
of  their  ancestors  in  England  who  had  been  distressed  by 
the  methods  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  objecting  not  so 
much  to  the  doctrines  which  they  preached  as  to  their 
custom  of  preaching  them  in  the  street.  It  was  felt  that 
the  prescribed  services  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
were  ill-adapted  to  the  informal  conditions  of  western  life. 
It  was  also  felt  that  the  unfailing  use  of  these  services 
was  a  matter  of  imperative  obligation.  But  in  the  fifties 
the  mind  of  the  Church  was  changing.  Young  men  were 
going  out  on  the  errand  of  the  Church  into  the  far  west. 
Kip  was  preaching  to  the  miners  in  California,  Scott  was 
starting  missions  in  Oregon,  Whipple  was  on  his  way  to 
Minnesota  to  carry  the  gospel  to  the  Indians.  At  the  same 
time  the  "Memorial"  prepared  by  Dr.  Muhlenberg,  and 
submitted  to  the  House  of  Bishops  in  the  General  Con- 
vention of  1853,  was  asking  "whether  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church,  with  only  her  present  canonical  means 
and  appliances,  her  fixed  and  invariable  modes  of  public 


36  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

worship,  her  traditional  customs  and  usages,  is  competent 
to  do  the  work  of  preaching  and  dispensing  the  Gospel 
to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  so,  adequate  to  do 
the  work  of  the  Lord  in  this  land  and  for  this  age?"  The 
most  able  and  influential  champion  of  the  Memorial  Move- 
ment thus  begun  was  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter. 

The  bishop  sent  his  son  in  the  spirit  of  this  new  time. 
He  began  his  ministry  under  conditions  which  impressed 
upon  his  mind  the  determining  truth  that  the  Church  is 
meant  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Church.  There  was  up- 
held before  him  by  the  discussions  of  the  time  and  his 
father's  large  and  wise  share  in  them,  by  the  example  of 
other  men  only  a  little  older  than  himself  who  were  preach- 
ing in  new  fields,  and  by  the  circumstances  of  his  own 
work,  the  ideal  of  an  aggressive  church,  waiting  no  longer 
for  men  to  come  in,  but  going  out  to  bring  them  in. 

Greensburg,  in  1857,  had  about  thirteen  hundred  in- 
habitants. Henry  Potter,  writing  long  after  for  the  parish- 
records  his  memories  of  the  place,  recalled  that  its  interests 
were  chiefly  agricultural.  The  land  was  fertile,  and  the 
farms  had  not  yet  been  set  aside  for  the  sake  of  the  fields 
of  coal  which  lay  beneath  them.  ''Fresh  from  the  con- 
ventions of  Philadelphia  society,  the  young  deacon,"  says 
Dr.  Richards,  "entered  upon  his  work  in  a  community 
where  his  chief  intellectual  companionship  depended  upon 
'a  Roman  Catholic  lawyer  who  was  a  drunkard,  and  an 
infidel  physician  who  wras  a  rake."  This  description  of 
the  social  condition  of  the  village  was  exaggerated  into 
this  epigram  out  of  playful  accounts  which  Potter  gave 
his  friends  at  home.  But  "he  confessed  to  me,"  says 
Dr.  Richards,  "that  he  found  a  surprising  difference  in 
the  standards  of  life  east  and  west  of  the  Alleghenies.  He 
had  always  thought  that  human  nature  was  substantially 
the  same  everywhere,  but  now  discovered  that  he  could  not 
speak  the  same  language,  nor  appeal  to  the  same  motives 
which  had  been  familiar  to  him.  He  must  be  made  all 
over  again  before  he  could  come  in  satisfactory  toucli  with 


IN   A   COUNTRY   PARISH  37 

his  people."  It  was  this  making-over  process  in  his  ex- 
perience as  a  minister  among  village  people  which  brought 
into  his  life  a  certain  abiding  quality  of  comradeship  with 
very  simple  men  and  women. 

"For  the  first  few  months  of  my  ministry/'  he  said  in 
his  memories  of  Greensburg,  "I  boarded  in  the  house  of 
a  lady  who  was  the  widow  of  a  Pennsylvania  jurist ;  and 
later,  my  home  was  in  a  suburb  of  Greensburg,  then  known 
as  Ludwig,  where  my  eldest  child  was  born.  It  would 
violate  a  very  sacred  confidence  if  I  were  to  speak  here 
of  the  homes  of  which  I  was  made  free,  or  of  the  lovely 
and  loveable  people,  —  some  of  them,  thank  God,  still 
living  —  who  abode  in  them.  Their  devotion  to  Christ 
Church,  and  their  loyalty  to  its  very  young  and  inexpe- 
rienced rector,  were  unwearied ;  and  when  in  some  meagre 
recognition  of  his  missionary  obligations,  he  went  to  and 
fro  for  occasional  services  in  adjoining  towns,  they  were 
patient  and  uncomplaining,  notwithstanding  his  often 
lack  of  service  to  themselves. 

"For  these  missionary  excursions  I  kept  a  horse  which 
I  fed  and  groomed  myself,  and  which  bore  me  faithfully 
and  uncomplainingly  over  many  a  rough  road.  I  have 
said  that  I  groomed  him ;  but,  if  I  did,  he  never  showed 
it ;  and  the  only  mild  derision  in  which  my  long-suffering 
vestry  allowed  itself  to  indulge,  had  reference  to  my  too 
occasional  use  of  a  currycomb,  which,  alas,  my  neglected 
steed  most  plainly  betrayed. 

"The  Episcopal  Church,  as  I  knew  it  in  Western  Penn- 
sylvania, stood  for  a  small  and  rather  feeble  folk.  I  sup- 
pose it  was  this  that  explained  a  certain  good-natured 
condescension  of  which  I  became  distinctly  sensible  soon 
after  I  removed  to  Greensburg.  Brethren  of  other  com- 
munions did  not  hate  or  fear  us,  for  there  was  nothing  in 
us  to  provoke  either  emotion.  They  thought  the  Church- 
people  were  a  very  decent  folk,  but  that  we  knew  but  little, 
if  anything,  of  'vital  religion.'  Our  ways  were  to  be  leni- 
ently tolerated,  but  not  to  be  imitated.  If  there  was  any 


38  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

virtue  or  piety  among  us,  it  had  been  derived  from  sources 
foreign  or  unsympathetic.  Apart  from  these,  we  were  still 
groping  in  the  dark. 

"We  had  a  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  in  Greens- 
burg,  and  when  its  rooms  were  opened  there  was  a  Dedica- 
tory Service  in  which  I  was  invited  to  take  part.  Walking 
home  from  this  service  an  elderly  lady  of  devout  Presbyte- 
rian lineage  and  fellowship  said  to  her  nephew,  'Richard, 
who  was  that  young  man  who  made  the  prayer?' 

"'That,'  replied  Richard,  'was  the  Episcopal  minister, 
Mr.  Potter.' 

"'Oh,  no,'  straightway  exclaimed  the  old  lady,  'you  must 
be  mistaken  there.  Them  'Piscopals  can't  make  a  prayer 
without  a  book.' 

"'But  I  know  him,'  answered  Richard,  'and  that  was 
the  Episcopal  minister.' 

"After  some  moments  of  silence,  Richard's  aunt  ejaculated, 
'Yes,  yes,  I  see  it  now !  He  is  a  grandson  of  Dr.  Nott.' 

"The  incident  was  an  illustration  of  a  widespread  con- 
viction that  the  Episcopal  Church  was  a  dreary  bond- 
servant of  written  forms  of  devotion.  If  any  churchman 
could  pray  without  them,  it  must  be  because  he  had  the 
blood  of  some  non-liturgical  ancestor  in  his  veins." 

The  lack  of  congenial  companionship  in  Greensburg, 
so  far  as  it  existed  beyond  the  humorous  complaints  of 
the  young  rector's  early  letters,  was  soon  relieved  by  his 
marriage,  in  the  fall  of  1857.  The  good  cheer  and  wise 
counsel  which  Eliza  Jacobs  brought  him  appear  in  the 
reminiscences  of  Dr.  Richards. 

"I  made  him  a  visit  while  he  was  at  Greensburg.  He 
had  lately  married  Miss  Jacobs  of  Central  Pennsylvania, 
a  woman  of  strong  character,  outspoken,  true,  and  with  a 
keen  sense  of  humor.  She  loved  him  with  all  her  heart, 
and  therefore  was  sensitive  to  any  defects  or  weaknesses 
in  the  man  she  sought  to  idealize,  and  brave  enough  hon- 
estly to  confront  him  with  them.  She  was  an  invaluable 
wife,  then  and  always.  She  proved  it  in  trifles  as  in  greater 


IN   A   COUNTRY   PARISH  39 

things.  A  good  many  years  after  their  marriage,  I  slept 
in  a  room  adjoining  his  dressing-room  at  Grace  Church 
Rectory.  Such  peals  of  laughter  came  through  the  wall 
that  at  breakfast  time  I  chaffed  him  about  it,  and  said 
that  such  mirth  so  early  in  the  day  was  unnatural,  and 
must  have  been  put  on  to  impress  strangers  in  the  guest- 
room. He  responded  that  he  used  to  be  glum  as  a  bear 
before  breakfast,  but  that  his  wife's  persistent  and  jubilant 
cheerfulness  had  been  too  much  for  him,  and  that  she  had 
wholly  reformed  him  in  that  regard." 

The  Bishop  had  known  Eliza  Jacobs  from  her  earliest 
childhood.  "She  has  great  capacities  for  usefulness,"  he 
wrote  to  his  son,  "and,  as  she  will  feel  very  sensibly  the 
absence  of  the  large  and  lively  circle  at  home,  give  her  all 
the  employment  you  can  find  in  the  parish.  It  will 
strengthen  the  hold  of  both  of  you  on  the  affections  of  the 
people,  and  open  your  way  to  many  hearts  that  you  would 
not  so  well  reach  otherwise.  I  can  never  forget  how  much 
I  owed  in  this  way  to  your  mother.  At  the  beginning  of 
one's  ministry  such  help  is  especially  important,  that 
your  time  may  not  be  too  much  frittered  away  in  details 
which  distract  the  mind  of  a  student.  It  is  a  startling  and 
deplorable  fact  that  few  clergymen  improve  greatly  in 
knowledge  or  mental  power  after  the  first  five  years  of 
their  ministry.  This  ought  not  to  be  so ;  and  it  would 
not  if  our  profession  had  more  of  the  true  spirit  of  self- 
culture,  and  were  less  harassed  by  varieties  of  work  of 
which  much  might  be  better  done  by  laymen  and  by  the 
pastor's  wife." 

A  single  reminiscence  of  the  Greensburg  days  appeared 
years  after  in  an  address  in  New  York  to  the  men  of  Squadron 
A  who  had  been  left  behind  while  their  comrades  went  to 
the  Spanish  War.  Henry  Potter  spoke  to  them  on  the  vir- 
tue of  obedience  to  authority.  "A  number  of  years  ago," 
he  said,  "when  I  was  pastor  in  Western  Pennsylvania,  while 
riding  in  a  train  I  and  my  fellow  passengers  suddenly 
found  ourselves  violently  hurled  from  our  places,  and 


40  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

heaped  together  at  one  end  of  the  car.  Our  train  had 
collided  with  another,  and  the  scene  when  we  extricated 
ourselves  from  the  debris  was  one  of  tremendous  confusion. 
In  a  few  moments,  wrhen  our  panic  had  somewhat  sub- 
sided, there  came  out  of  the  throng  a  small  slender  man 
whom  I  met  then  for  the  first  time,  and  who  afterwards 
took  a  great  part  in  the  War  of  the  Rebellion.  Without 
raising  his  voice,  without  vehemence  of  gesture,  in  a  nat- 
urally calm  manner,  he  took  command  of  the  whole  situa- 
tion. In  a  very  short  time  he  succeeded  in  clearing  the 
track  of  the  shattered  locomotive  and  cars.  I  asked  who 
this  man  was,  and  learned  that  he  was  assistant  superin- 
tendent of  the  company.  He  afterwards  became  Assistant 
Secretary  of  War,  leaving  a  record  in  the  service  of  his 
country  which  those  who  knew  Thomas  A.  Scott,  and  his 
singular  gifts  of  leadership,  will  never  forget.  There  could 
not  be  a  more  perfect  illustration  than  this  of  the  incarna- 
tion and  impersonation  of  what  may  be  called  imperial 
authority.  From  first  to  last,  there  was  no  ostentation, 
obtrusiveness,  or  conceit." 

In  July,  1858,  the  vestry  of  Calvary  Church,  East  Liberty 
(a  suburb  of  Pittsburgh)  unanimously  resolved  to  call 
Mr.  Potter  to  the  pastoral  oversight  of  that  parish.  They 
promised  him  a  salary  of  five  hundred  dollars  a  year,  in 
quarterly  installments.  "It  is  further  stipulated  and 
agreed  upon,"  they  said,  "that,  the  amount  of  salary  now 
proposed  being  the  amount  pledged  by  yearly  subscribers, 
should  there  be  any  increase  in  our  subscription  list,  the 
vestry  will  gladly  pay  the  amount,  whatever  it  may  be, 
to  our  future  rector." 

One  of  the  vestry  was  requested  to  visit  Mr.  Potter  and 
endeavor  to  induce  him  to  accept  this  call,  explaining  the 
situation  of  the  parish  and  its  prospects  of  growth.  He 
was  to  suggest  that  "a  liberal  support  might  be  obtained 
for  Mr.  Potter  through  the  aid  of  the  Missionary  Societies 
of  the  Diocese." 

This  call,  thus  offering  an  opportunity  to  the  minister  to 


IN   A   COUNTRY   PARISH  41 

make  his  ministrations  spiritually  profitable  to  the  con- 
gregation and  at  the  same  time  financially  profitable  to 
himself,  combining  gain  with  godliness,  Mr.  Potter  declined. 
He  said  afterwards  that  he  felt  towards  the  parish  as  a 
young  woman  feels  towards  a  young  man  who  has  un- 
successfully sought  her  hand.  She  has  not  been  able  to 
accept  his  kind  invitation,  but  she  admires  his  taste ! 

On  October  loth,  Henry  Potter  was  ordained  to  the 
priesthood  by  Dr.  Bowman,  Assistant  Bishop  of  Penn- 
sylvania, in  Trinity  Church,  Pittsburgh. 

A  year  later  a  call  was  accepted  which  came  from  St. 
John's  Church,  Troy. 

The  marriage  of  Mr.  Potter  had  been  followed  by  a 
round  of  family  visits,  in  the  course  of  which  the  young 
couple  went  to  Schenectady  to  see  his  grandparents,  the 
Notts.  Old  friends  came  to  call  from  all  the  surrounding 
country,  and  among  them  were  people  from  Troy.  In 
returning  these  visits  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Potter  were  often 
accompanied  by  his  sister.  "In  the  course  of  this  round 
of  matrimonial  visits,"  she  says,  "we  were  one  day  at 
Troy,  and  we  lunched  at  the  house  of  three  maiden  ladies, 
who  —  in  common  (as  it  seemed  to  me  then)  with  dozens 
of  other  people  —  said  that  they  had  helped  to  bring  my 
brothers  up,  but  especial  attention  had  been  given  to 
Henry.  The  dear  boy  used  to  lunch  with  them  every 
Sunday.  'And  do  you  remember,  Henry,  how  fond  you 
were  of  that  raised  apple-pie  that  Dinah  used  to  make?" 
They  all  laughed  a  good  deal  about  it  —  "  how  merry  and 
full  of  fun  we  all  were  !  "  —  but  it  had  its  serious  side  in  the 
reviving  of  old  associations  which,  when  St.  John's  was 
looking  for  a  rector,  suggested  Henry  Potter  to  many  minds. 

Moreover,  his  uncle,  the  bishop  of  Xew  York,  had  con- 
secrated St.  John's  Church,  in  1855,  and  on  that  occasion 
his  father  had  preached  the  sermon.  There  was  thus  both 
a  friendly  and  a  family  connection  with  the  parish. 

So  they  called  him,  and  in  May,  1859,  he  accepted,  leav- 
ing Greensburg  amidst  the  lamentations  of  the  people. 


CHAPTER  IV 

A    WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP 
1859-1866 

OF  the  four  Episcopal  parishes  existing  at  that  time  in 
Troy,  St.  John's  was  the  second  in  the  order  of  foundation. 
The  Mother  Church,  St.  Paul's,  had  for  its  rector  Dr. 
Thomas  Winthrop  Coit,  who  had  written  a  book  entitled 
"Puritanism,"  which  was  learned  and  witty  but  frankly 
polemical,  and  was  not  agreeable  reading  for  Puritans. 
Dr.  J.  Ireland  Tucker  was  the  rector  of  Holy  Cross ;  he 
is  remembered  in  the  church  at  large  for  the  musical  edi- 
tion of  the  Church  Hymnal  which  he  edited  in  1872.  The 
rector  of  Christ  Church  was  Dr.  Mulcahey,  who  was  fol- 
lowed by  Dr.  Eaton  W.  Maxey,  to  whom  succeeded  the 
Rev.  Joseph  X.  Mulford. 

St.  John's  Church,  consecrated  in  1855,  was  in  the  Gothic 
style  of  architecture.  No  other  church  in  town  was  built 
that  way.  Even  in  Episcopal  parishes  at  that  time,  the 
Gothic  manner  was  subject  to  suspicion.  When  Mr. 
Potter  came  back  to  Troy  to  preach  in  1905  a  sermon 
commemorative  of  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  build- 
ing of  the  church,  he  commented  upon  that  fact.  "In 
Philadelphia/'  he  said,  "where  I  grew  up,  the  conspicuous 
edifices  were  built  on  the  Greek  lines  of  architecture,  and 
a  foreigner,  seeing  the  fluted  and  Doric  columns,  would 
be  justified  in  saying  that  the  country  had  gone  back  to 
a  classic  style.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  building  like  this 
were  encountered,  there  would  be  those  who  would  say 
that  the  church  was  going  back  to  certain  Latin  supersti- 
tions." He  felt  that  the  rector  and  vestry  of  1855  had 

42 


A  WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  43 

done  a  bold  and  notable  thing  in  thus  defying  a  general 
sentiment,  and  appropriating  to  the  use  of  the  church  a 
kind  of  building  which  was  intrinsically  beautiful,  regard- 
less of  a  passing  prejudice.  "There  is  no  such  felicity  in 
architecture,"  he  said  at  that  time,  "in  the  Diocese  of 
Albany." 

The  Troy  Daily  Whig  of  June  1,  1855,  contained  a  long 
description  of  the  church,  noticing  its  walls  of  red  sand- 
stone, looking  "as  massive  and  ancient  as  if  they  had 
withstood  the  storms  of  hundreds  of  winters,"  its  open- 
timbered  roof,  its  organ  in  the  west  end,  and  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  "throughout  this  building  whatever 
is  seen  is  real.  There  are  no  imitations,  no  deceptions." 
Mr.  Potter  wrote  to  a  friend,  "You  know  what  a  gem  the 
church  is,  with  its  chapel." 

Between  1830,  when  the  parish  was  founded,  and  1859, 
when  Mr.  Potter's  rectorship  began,  there  had  been  ten 
rectors.  He  was  the  eleventh.  Two  of  them  had  each 
stayed  for  seven  years,  but  the  others  had  remained  only 
a  year  or  two.  The  frequent  changes  were  due  in  part 
to  the  ill-health  of  successive  ministers.  The  rector  im- 
mediately preceding  had  met  with  an  accident  on  the  very 
day  of  his  arrival,  and  had  never  been  able  fully  to  dis- 
charge his  duties.  But  there  were  also  indications  of 
parochial  disagreement.  "Before  you  came  among  us," 
said  the  vestry  when  Mr.  Potter  resigned,  "we  well  re- 
member the  dissentient  views  that  obtained  not  only  in 
our  own  body  but  in  the  congregation  which  we  represent." 
It  is  a  tradition  in  St.  John's  that  during  the  early  years 
of  Mr.  Potter's  incumbency  the  vestry  was  never  called 
together,  "in  consequence  of  some  factional  feeling,"  a 
survival  of  controversies  which  "had  left  the  personal 
relations  of  many  parishioners  strained  and  uncomfortable." 

The  nature  of  the  disagreement  thus  indicated  does 
not  appear.  But  it  was  a  time  when  there  were  "dissen- 
tient views"  in  many  congregations.  The  everlasting  de- 
bate between  "high"  churchmen  and  "low"  churchmen 


44  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

was  proceeding  with  increased  loudness  of  voice.  In  spite 
of  its  Gothic  architecture,  St.  John's  was  a  low-church 
parish,  the  only  one  of  that  kind  in  Troy.  Writing  to  Dr. 
Heman  Dyer  of  Xew  York  in  1866,  and  asking  him  to 
suggest  a  possible  successor  in  the  impending  vacancy  of 
the  rectorship,  Mr.  Potter  referred  to  the  "peculiar  posi- 
tion" of  the  parish.  "It  is  to  be  considered,"  he  said, 
"that  it  no  longer  stands  alone  here.  St.  Paul's,  Albany, 
and  Christ  Church  in  that  city,  are  now  both  adminis- 
tered by  men  of  distinctively  evangelical  views."  It  is  a 
definition  of  his  own  position  at  that  time.  He  held  "dis- 
tinctively evangelical  views." 

Whatever  the  parochial  difficulties  were,  they  soon 
yielded  to  the  wise  treatment  of  the  new  rector.  The 
Hon.  John  Hudson  Peck,  then  one  of  the  active  young 
men  of  the  parish,  recalls  how  quietly,  even  imperceptibly, 
the  air  was  changed.  "Without  anybody  knowing  exactly 
why  or  how,  everybody  was  soon  aware  that  St.  John's 
had  become  a  cheerful,  harmonious  home  for  a  contented, 
busy,  devoted  congregation.  The  change  had  come  as 
quietly  and  inconspicuously  as  the  tide  changes  in  the 
open  sea." 

Writing  to  the  parish  long  after,  Air.  Potter  said  :  "The 
earliest  and  happiest  years  of  my  ministry  were  spent 
in  labors  within  [St.  John's]  beautiful  shadow ;  and  I 
shall  never  forget  how  quickly  and  kindly  its  people  trans- 
muted the  self-distrust  and  foreboding  with  which  I  began 
my  work  among  them  into  courage  and  hope.  St.  John's, 
as  I  have  known  it,  has  been  preeminently  distinguished 
by  the  loyal  devotion  of  its  people  to  their  church  in  all 
its  interests."  To  the  peace  which  was  thus  brought  to 
the  disturbed  parish,  the  vestry  bore  witness.  "Under 
your  ministry,"  they  said,  referring  to  the  time  of  dis- 
sentient views,  "this  state  of  affairs  soon  gave  way  to  one 
more  in  accord  with  that  fellowship  which  is  the  vital 
force  of  every  religious  community,  and  strength  followed 
the  unitv  thus  established.'1 


A  WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  45 

But  outside  the  parish  there  was  no  peace.  The  nation 
was  preparing  for  the  Civil  War.  In  1860,  a  fugitive 
slave  was  arrested  in  Troy  that  he  might  be  taken  back, 
as  men  said,  to  the  lash  of  his  master.  A  mob  arose  and 
rescued  him,  and  sent  him  on  to  safety  in  Canada.  In 
February,  1861,  Abraham  Lincoln,  president-elect,  passed 
through  the  city  on  his  way  to  his  inauguration.  On  a 
Sunday  in  April  of  that  year,  following  the  first  great 
war-meeting  in  Troy,  all  of  the  ministers  preached  patriotic 
sermons.  It  was  noticed  as  an  interesting  coincidence 
that  the  First  Lesson  appointed  for  that  day  in  the  Prayer- 
book  contained  the  passage  from  the  Book  of  Joel,  which 
reads:  "Prepare  war,  wake  up  the  mighty  men,  let  all 
the  men  of  war  draw  near ;  let  them  come  up.  Beat  your 
plowshares  into  swords,  and  your  pruninghooks  into  spears : 
let  the  weak  say,  I  am  strong."  In  May  the  first  regiment 
from  Troy  started  for  the  South.  It  was  Ephraim  Elmer 
Ellsworth,  Colonel  of  this  regiment,  who  pulled  down 
the  Confederate  flag  from  the  roof  of  the  tavern  in  Alex- 
andria, and,  being  shot  by  the  landlord,  gave  his  life  as  a 
first  sacrifice  to  the  great  cause.  The  scene  of  the  tragedy 
was  familiar  to  the  rector  of  St.  John's. 

Robert  Brown  Potter,  six  years  Henry's  senior,  com- 
manded the  51st  New  York  Volunteers  in  the  campaign 
of  1862  at  Cedar  Mountain,  at  the  second  battle  of  Bull 
Run,  and  at  Antietam.  He  was  wounded  at  Antietam 
and  at  Petersburg.  The  war  touched  the  family  of  the 
rector  as  it  touched  the  families  of  his  parish. 

In  1863,  Mr.  Potter  went  to  Gettysburg,  after  the  battle. 
Preaching  years  after  at  St.  John's,  and  recalling  in  par- 
ticular the  life  and  character  of  one  of  the  men  prominent 
in  the  parish  in  his  time,  he  said,  "I  was  rector  of  the  church 
during  the  Civil  War,  and  went  to  the  battle  of  Gettysburg, 
arriving  at  the  field  before  the  dead  were  buried.  I  never 
witnessed  such  a  sight,  and  I  received  a  physical  shock 
from  which  it  took  me  a  long  time  to  recover.  I  came 
back  to  Troy,  and  was  for  a  long  time  laid  up  with  a  serious 


46  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

illness  at  the  residence  of  the  man  of  whom  I  spoke.  It 
was  during  the  time  of  the  draft  riots,  and  this  man  had 
incurred  the  enmity  of  many.  There  came  into  my  bed- 
room a  dull,  roaring  sound,  but  I  was  too  weak  to  under- 
stand what  it  was.  He  came  into  my  room,  and  stepped 
up  to  the  window,  and  closed  the  shutters.  I  asked  him 
why  he  did  that,  and  he  said  because  the  glare  of  the  sun 
was  so  great.  Years  after,  I  found  out  that  at  that  time 
a  mob  was  threatening  the  destruction  of  his  house.  Four 
men  were  waiting  in  the  hall  below  with  a  stretcher  on 
which  to  carry  me  across  the  alley  to  the  basement  of  this 
church,  where  he  thought  I  would  be  safe." 

He  kept  a  list  of  all  the  sermons  which  he  preached  in 
those  years.  The  sermons  have  long  since  been  destroyed, 
partly  because  he  had  a  humble  opinion  of  the  value  of 
his  own  writing,  and  partly  by  reason  of  an  instinct  of 
neatness  which  delighted  in  the  burning  of  old  papers. 
His  habit  of  clearing  out  his  desks  and  closets  impoverishes 
his  biographer.  But  the  texts  and  titles  of  these  sermons 
remain  in  the  blank  book  in  which  he  began  to  enter  homi- 
letical  suggestions  and  records  in  the  first  year  of  his  rector- 
ship in  Troy.  The  subjects  which  are  thus  preserved  are 
curiously  devoid  of  allusion  to  current  events.  Once  he 
preached  on  "The  Attributes  of  the  Christian  Soldier," 
but  the  sermon  was  preceded  and  followed  by  such  themes 
as  "Thoughts  for  Ascension  Day,"  "Well-doing,  Without 
Weariness,"  "The  Ministration  of  the  Spirit,"  "The  Great 
Supper,"  "Steadfastness  in  the  Faith,"  and  "Christian 
Courtesy."  On  the  21st  of  June,  1863,  he  preached  on 
"The  Opening  of  the  Iron  Gates."  The  next  entry  is  on 
the  9th  of  August,  when  he  preached  on  "Succor  in  the 
Plague,"  taking  his  text  from  Numbers  16: 48 --"He 
stood  between  the  dead  and  the  living ;  and  the  plague 
was  stayed."  That  was  his  first  sermon  after  his  return 
from  Gettysburg,  where  he  had  himself  stood  between  the 
living  and  the  dead.  He  must  have  spoken  of  the  succor 
which  the  Lord  God  would  bring  in  the  midst  of  the  hideous 


A   WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  47 

plague  of  war,  a  succor  for  which  men  were  then  praying, 
but  without  evident  answer.  The  Battle  of  Antietam  was 
fought  on  the  16th  and  17th  of  September,  1862.  On 
Sunday,  the  21st  of  September,  the  sermon  at  St.  John's 
was  on  "Love  for  an  Unseen  Christ."  The  war  was  ended 
with  the  formal  surrender  of  Lee  on  the  9th  of  April,  1865. 
That  was  Palm  Sunday,  and  Mr.  Potter  preached  on 
"Christ's  Pity."  On  Easter  Day  the  subject  was  "The 
Resurrection  Body." 

How  far  he  illustrated  these  sermons  by  reference  to 
the  heroisms  and  martyrdoms  of  the  time,  there  is  now  no 
way  to  determine.  Mr.  Peck  remembers  that  "he  had 
no  tricks  of  rhetoric.  His  sermons  were  in  style  like  letters, 
and  were  read  quietly  like  letters,  but  at  times  attracted 
much  attention  through  the  aptness  of  their  good  sense 
and  the  clarity  of  their  directness  and  wisdom.  He  taught 
old  lessons  in  a  new  way  with  fresh  illustration  and  with 
a  novel  juxtaposition  of  facts,  fixing  attention,  and  giving 
them  increased  interest  and  force.  He  never  made  any 
use  of  what,  in  the  street,  is  called  sensation." 

It  is  plain  from  the  statements  of  the  subjects  that  the 
preacher  was  devoting  himself  faithfully  and  quietly  to 
the  upbuilding  of  the  spiritual  life.  The  war  was  indeed 
in  progress  between  the  North  and  the  South,  but  there 
was  another  war  wherein  the  devil  was  besieging  the 
soul  of  man.  To  this  the  preacher  continued  to  address 
himself. 

But  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  in  1865,  —  kept,  that  year, 
on  the  first  Thursday  in  December  —  he  preached  a  sermon 
whose  title  in  the  Blank  Book  is  "Thanks  for  Victory." 
It  was  printed  by  the  congregation  under  the  title  "Our 
Threefold  Victory."  With  the  exception  of  "Thirty  Years 
Reviewed,"  an  historical  and  statistical  discourse  preached 
and  printed  in  1861,  this  was  his  first  published  sermon. 
Here  the  preacher  speaks  for  himself,  and  is  heard  by  a 
public  larger  than  his  congregation. 

"This  is  a  National  Thanksgiving  Day,"  he  says,  "such 


48  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

as  no  nation  was  ever  called  on  to  keep  before.  There  is 
that  to  be  acknowledged  here  this  morning  which  makes 
this,  of  all  similar  days  in  our  history,  supreme.  The 
perils  that  are  ended,  the  boons  that  are  secured,  the  mercies 
that  are  to  be  commemorated,  are  simply  incomparable  in 
all  the  past.  And  for  these,  I  affirm,  we  are  called  on  to 
thank  God,  not  in  any  Jewish  or  Mohammedan  way,  but 
'through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.'  For  if  ours  are  not  vic- 
tories at  the  root  of  which  lie  the  mighty  principles  of  the 
gospel  of  Christ,  —  if  the  principles  of  that  gospel  are  not 
those  which  have  prevailed,  —  if  the  teachings  of  its  divine 
Author  are  not  those  which  have  been  vindicated,  then 
those  services  have  no  meaning,  this  sanctuary  opened 
amid  the  business  of  the  week,  no  suitableness,  these  hymns 
and  anthems  of  praise  no  shadow  of  propriety.  If  it  is 
only  brute  force  which  has  won  us  peace,  and  there  has 
been  no  triumph  of  those  divine  facts  of  justice  and  truth 
and  the  sacredness  of  humanity  which  Christ  brought  into 
the  world,  then  we  had  better  stop  right  here  and  go  home. 
I  have  no  business  to  speak  or  you  to  listen." 

He  refers,  with  frank  dissent,  to  the  action  of  the  General 
Convention,  recently  in  session,  which  decided  that  we 
could  not  thank  God  for  victory.  "There  are  a  great 
many  among  us,"  he  says,  "who  take  issue  distinctly  with 
this  Church's  last  General  Convention,  —  many  among 
us  who  deny  that  its  action  represented  fairly  the  mind 
of  the  constituencies  behind  it."  He  speaks  of  its  "over- 
cautious silence,"  and  deprecates  "that  timid  and  unmanly 
temper  which  has,  among  so  many  of  our  Northern  People, 
too  long  sacrificed  principle  to  expediency." 

The  discussion  of  the  slavery  question,  even  before  the 
war  began,  had  divided  most  of  the  religious  communions 
into  separate  organizations,  North  and  South.  The  Epis- 
copal Church  had  remained  united.  Even  when  the  war 
was  in  progress,  and  the  Southern  dioceses  had  followed 
the  Southern  states,  the  separation  was  not  recognized  by 
the  General  Convention.  Day  by  day,  in  the  sessions  of 


A   WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  49 

that  body  in  1862,  the  roll-call  included  all  the  dioceses. 
The  differences  of  opinion,  which  elsewhere  were  sharply 
divided  by  Mason-and-Dixon's  line,  appeared  in  the  Epis- 
copal Church  among  those  who  belonged  to  the  same 
parish  and  sat  in  the  same  convention.  Even  in  the  Con- 
gregational Churches  of  New  England  there  were  divisions 
in  the  parishes,  and  men  were  known  to  express  their  dis- 
agreement with  the  parson's  war-sermon  by  getting  up 
and  going  out  of  the  meeting,  emphasizing  their  departure 
by  a  slam  of  the  pew  door  which  was  picturesquely  de- 
scribed as  a  "wooden  damn."  But  nowhere  were  there 
such  searchings  of  heart  as  in  the  Episcopal  Church. 

The  situation  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  House 
of  Bishops  in  1862  found  itself  obliged  to  choose  between 
two  proposed  Pastoral  Letters.  One  was  written  by  Bishop 
Hopkins  of  Vermont,  who  had  maintained  in  a  pamphlet 
that  slavery  was  sanctioned  in  the  teachings  of  the  Bible. 
The  other  was  written  by  Bishop  Mcllvaine  of  Ohio,  who 
went  to  England  with  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  Archbishop 
Hughes,  at  the  request  of  President  Lincoln,  to  represent 
the  Union  cause.  The  House  declined  the  Letter  of  Bishop 
Hopkins,  which  omitted  all  reference  to  the  national  situa- 
tion, and  accepted  the  Letter  of  Bishop  Mcllvaine. 

Now  in  1865,  at  the  assembly  of  the  next  General  Con- 
vention, when  the  roll  was  called  as  usual,  three  Southern 
dioceses  responded,  and  several  Southern  bishops  were  in 
attendance.  The  House  of  Bishops  proposed  a  thanks- 
giving "for  peace  in  the  country  and  union  in  the  Church." 
In  the  House  of  Deputies,  Mr.  Horace  Binney  moved  to 
add  to  this  expression  of  gratitude  a  thanksgiving  for  the 
restoration  of  union  in  the  nation,  and  for  the  removal  of 
the  curse  of  slavery.  This  resolution  was  laid  upon  the 
table.  This  was  the  declination  to  thank  God  for  "vic- 
tory," to  which  the  preacher  objected.  In  so  doing,  he 
allied  himself  with  such  large-minded  patriots  as  Dr.  Francis 
Vinton,  Mr.  Amos  A.  Lawrence  and  Mr.  Felix  Brunot. 
But  the  fraternal  courtesy  of  the  Convention  was  justified 


50  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

by  the  results ;  the  Southern  dioceses  returned  and  the 
unity  of  the  Episcopal  Church  was  maintained. 

The  vigor  of  youth  appears  in  the  swinging  eloquence 
of  the  enthusiastic  sermon.  "I  rejoice/'  he  says,  "in  the 
victory  of  our  arms.  I  remember,  as  you  do,  the  taunts 
which,  with  growing  insolence,  were  for  forty  years  flung 
into  the  faces  of  the  Northern  people  —  how  our  courage 
was  mocked  at,  our  love  of  right  and  principle  derided 
as  the  cringing  abjectness  of  a  nation  of  tradesmen.  I 
remember,  as  you  do,  how  our  armies  were  called  hirelings, 
and  their  leaders  politicians,  and  I  thank  God  that  in  the 
great  interests  of  liberty  and  law,  He  has  enabled  us  to 
silence  that  drivelling  arrogance  forever."  "For  myself," 
he  adds,  "I  rejoice  to  remember  that  during  the  long  and 
bitter  struggle  now  so  grandly  ended,  this  pulpit  never 
uttered  a  timid  syllable,  or  spoke  a  despondent  word. 
And  there  are  some  here  of  whom,  as  I  look  into  their  faces, 
I  can  remember  that  they  too  never  lost  heart,  or  for  one 
moment  doubted  the  end."  The  inference  is  that  there 
were  others  of  whom  this  could  not  be  said.  This  difference 
of  opinion  may  have  been  among  the  "dissentient  views" 
of  which  the  vestry  spoke. 

Meanwhile,  the  young  rector  and  his  wife  had  entered 
actively  into  the  beneficent  activities  of  the  town.  Mr. 
Potter  was  vice-president  of  the  Patriotic  Women's  Society. 
Mrs.  Potter's  name  stood  second  on  a  list  of  the  first  trustees 
of  the  Children's  Home  Society,  the  purpose  of  which  was 
to  care  for  such  children  as  were  "unable  or  unwilling  to 
attend  the  ward  schools."  This  was  the  first  corporate 
body  composed  entirely  of  women,  which  was  legally  con- 
stituted by  the  State  Assembly  to  manage  its  own  affairs. 

Within  five  years  the  seventy  families  whom  he  found 
in  the  parish  had  become  a  hundred  and  sixty,  and  the  list 
of  communicants  had  lengthened  from  a  hundred  and 
fifty  to  three  hundred  and  five.  In  his  "Thirty  Years 
Reviewed,"  preached  in  his  second  year  in  commemoration 
of  the  thirtieth  anniversary  of  the  establishment  of  the 


ALON/O  POTTER 

of  Pennsylvania,  1-4."> 


A   WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  51 

parish,  he  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  during  these 
two  years  he  had  had  forty  funerals.  Even  when  he  came, 
as  he  said  on  another  occasion,  it  was  a  parish  of  young 
people.  "There  were  few  gray  heads  in  St.  John's  when 
I  came  to  it,  or  left  it."  "The  young  blood,"  he  added, 
"kindled  into  a  common  enthusiasm  as  we  worked  to- 
gether." The  church  was  crowded.  The  organ  which 
had  stood  upon  the  floor  was  lifted  up  into  a  gallery  con- 
structed to  receive  it,  and  space  was  thus  made  for  a  hun- 
dred additional  sittings. 

The  Rev.  Thaddeus  A.  Snively,  rector  of  St.  John's  in 
1881,  preaching  on  one  of  those  anniversary  occasions  in 
which  the  parish  delighted,  said  in  his  sermon,  entitled 
"A  Half-Century  of  Parish  Life,"  "There  are  three  features 
of  the  work  which  Dr.  Potter  accomplished  that  we  should 
notice,  because  they  were  characteristic  of  the  first  seven 
years  of  a  new  phase  or  experience  in  our  history,  and  gave 
form,  I  am  quite  sure,  to  the  development  of  the  life  of 
St.  John's  Church. 

"Many  new  people  were  brought  in,  of  a  thoughtful  and 
earnest  character. 

"  Young  men  began  to  consider  St.  John's  their  home, 
and  rallied  around  the  young  rector  with  enthusiasm. 

"A  third  feature  which  resulted  from  the  other  two  was 
the  fact  that  a  new  character  was  given  to  the  parish  work." 

This  new  character,  he  said,  was  due  in  part  to  Mr. 
Potter's  "remarkable  personal  influence,"  and  in  part  to 
"the  form  which  he  gave  to  the  church's  teaching  and 
position,"  —  especially  "the  manner  in  which  he  presented 
the  church  to  those  not  her  members." 

The  Vestry  testified  that  he  "commended  the  truths  of 
Christianity  to  many  who  theretofore  had  manifested  but 
little  interest  in  them."  They  spoke  of  "the  influence  of 
the  rector  over  the  youth  of  the  parish."  They  expressed 
their  gratitude  for  "the  good  results  that  have  been  ap- 
parent in  our  whole  community  from  your  public  advocacy 
of  all  that  is  good  and  true  and  patriotic  and  beautiful, 


52  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

the  mollifying  influence  which  by  your  course  as  a  Christian 
gentleman  and  citizen  you  have  poured  upon  the  prejudices 
and  passions  of  all  with  whom  in  this  city  you  have  come  in 
contact." 

The  young  men  of  the  parish  added  their  word  of  ap- 
preciation. "Principally  through  your  sympathy  and 
thoughtf illness,"  they  said,  "St.  John's  has  been  a  de- 
lightful church  for  young  men.  At  a  period  of  life  when 
the  effort  of  our  hands  and  minds  has  been  our  only  effec- 
tive method  of  showing  interest  and  affection  in  the  cause 
of  the  Master,  you  have  enabled  us  to  contribute  that. 
Ways  have  been  opened  in  which  we  could  cooperate  in 
the  work  of  the  church.  We  have  known  that  when  there 
was  work  to  be  done  which  young  men  could  do,  they 
would  be  called  upon  to  do  it."  They  spoke  of  "the  per- 
sonal interest  and  Christian  regard  which  you  have  so 
frequently  evinced  towards  us." 

Mr.  Peck  remembers  one  time  when  the  young  people 
of  the  congregation  had  been  busy  making  hundreds  of 
feet  of  Christmas  wreathing  for  the  decoration  of  the  church, 
and  some  of  their  elders  had  objected  to  such  expenditure 
of  time  and  money.  The  youths  and  maidens  came  to 
the  Christmas  Eve  service  in  the  garnished  church,  an- 
noyed and  depressed  by  this  unsympathetic  criticism. 
Mr.  Potter  preached  from  the  text,  "To  what  purpose  is 
this  waste?"  The  sermon  contained  neither  rebuke  nor 
defence.  "It  was  simply  a  quiet  exposition  of  the  text." 
But  he  set  the  perspective  right.  Into  the  parochial  dif- 
ference he  did  not  enter ;  he  made  no  reference  to  the 
local  situation.  After  the  sermon  was  ended,  there  were 
"neither  victors  nor  vanquished."  But  the  young  people, 
"with  no  excuse  for  any  demonstration  nor  even  for  thank- 
ing him,"  felt  that  they  were  understood. 

He  won  the  enthusiastic  loyalty  of  his  fellow-workers 
in  the  parish  by  the  independence  which  lie  gave  them, 
and  by  the  constant  courtesy  with  which  he  respected  the 
dignity  of  their  position.  "He  was  greatly  interested," 


A  WAR-TIME    RECTORSHIP  53 

Mr.  Peck  says,  "in  his  Sunday  School.  For  years  he 
himself  was  at  the  head  of  a  very  large  class  of  young  women. 
It  outgrew  the  capacity  of  the  room  afforded  in  the  chapel 
where  the  general  school  met,  and  adjourned  early  in  the 
session  to  another  place.  But  the  rector  was  in  the  habit 
of  later  visiting  the  school  again  quite  frequently.  Some 
exigency  had  required  the  appointment  of  a  new  superin- 
tendent. Having  selected  the  person,  and  desiring  that 
the  teachers  and  officers  of  the  school  should  hold  the  new 
officer  in  high  respect  as  their  executive  head,  the  rector 
particularly  instructed  him  that  when  he  himself  entered 
the  school  room  it  would  be  at  irregular  times,  and  gener- 
ally with  no  special  purpose ;  that  he  would  never  address 
the  school  or  take  any  part  in  its  exercises  when  the  superin- 
tendent was  present  without  being  specially  and  publicly 
invited  to  do  so  by  that  officer.  He  wished  the  invitation 
so  given  that  all  present,  both  teachers  and  pupils,  should 
be  aware  of  it." 

These  reminiscences  reveal  already  the  presence  of  that 
quality  of  mind  which  is  conveniently  called  "tact"  and 
which  consists,  as  the  word  itself  indicates,  in  an  ability 
to  keep  "in  touch"  with  people.  He  had  it  by  reason  of 
his  honest  liking  for  his  neighbors,  by  his  consequent  under- 
standing of  them  and  by  a  certain  wideness  of  vision  which 
saw  life  in  its  right  proportions  and  kept  him  from  mis- 
taking molehills  for  volcanoes. 

In  1864,  the  parish  built  him  a  rectory.  There  Dr. 
Richards  presently  visited  him.  "One  of  my  early  memo- 
ries of  Potter,"  he  says,  "belongs  to  his  ministry  in  Troy. 
A  call  had  come  to  me  —  doubtless  at  his  suggestion  — 
from  a  parish  in  Albany.  On  a  bitter  March  day,  with  a 
strong  wind  blowing,  I  had  met  the  vestry,  and  taken  a 
look  at  the  church  building,  and  then  took  a  horse-car 
running  along  the  river  bank  to  consult  my  friend  at  Troy. 
I  reached  him  chilled  through,  and  not  all  the  warmth 
of  his  welcome  could  quite  restore  the  circulation.  As  I 
hugged  the  register,  he  said  in  his  hearty  voice,  '  This  won't 


54  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

do.  I'll  light  a  fire  on  my  new  study  hearth,  and  that  will 
thaw  you  out.'  It  was  done;  and  if  it  were  true  that 
'where  there  is  so  much  smoke  there  must  be  some  fire/ 
I  should  soon  have  been  in  a  glow.  Clouds  of  dense  smoke 
poured  out,  but  no  fire  resulted.  By  this  time  I  was  warm, 
and  so  was  he,  but  imperturbably  joyous  as  ever.  It  proved 
on  examination  that  the  masons  had  ended  the  flue  just 
above  the  fireplace,  and  the  wall  of  a  fine  room  had  to  be 
broken  down  to  rectify  the  blunder." 

"By  this  time,"  adds  Dr.  Richards,  "there  was  a  second 
member  of  the  family,  who  toddled  about  the  house  bear- 
ing the  most  amazing  resemblance  not  to  father  nor  mother, 
but  to  the  somewhat  stern-featured  grandfather,  the  great 
and  good  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania." 

In  June,  1864,  the  rector  of  St.  John's  represented  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  of  Troy  in  the  con- 
vention of  that  society  held  in  Boston.  He  read  a  paper 
on  "Young  Men's  Christian  Associations,  and  their  Work." 
The  convention  passed  a  vote  that  Mr.  Potter's  paper 
"be  adopted,  printed  and  circulated  throughout  the  land." 

"There  are  very  few  undertakings,"  said  the  essayist, 
"however  simple  in  their  nature  or  single  in  their  purpose, 
in  the  prosecution  of  which,  especially  if  they  are  continu- 
ous undertakings,  requiring  unremitting  and  long-protracted 
effort,  we  do  not  need  from  time  to  time  to  refresh  our 
memories  and  renew  our  zeal  by  a  reference  to  their  primary 
object,  —  to  reawaken  our  flagging  ardor  and  correct  our 
wandering  and  often  ill-directed  endeavors,  by  recalling 
to  mind  an  original  design." 

"The  history  of  the  origin  of  Young  Men's  Christian 
Associations  here  and  abroad  will  show,"  he  continued, 
"that  the  organization  grew  out  of  a  need  long  felt  for 
some  instrumentality,  especially  in  cities,  for  the  shelter 
arid  help  of  young  men,  above  all  for  the  care  and  succor 
of  young  men  separated  from  their  homes,  and  the  sacred 
and  protecting  influences  which  a  home  affords." 

The  society  was  therefore  directed  at  the  beginning  tow- 


A  WAR-TIME   RECTORSHIP  55 

ards  a  social  rather  than  a  distinctively  religious  mission. 
"Ours  is  not  a  religious  body,  of  the  nature  of  a  church, 
all  of  whose  members  must  have  subscribed  to  certain 
standards,  and  stand  in  a  certain  open  relation  to  other 
Christian  people ;  but  it  is  an  association  of  young  men 
for  a  Christian  purpose,  not  merely  towards  others,  but 
towards  themselves.  In  other  words,  if  I  understand  the 
design  of  our  brotherhood  aright,  it  does  not  undertake  to 
look  after  Christian  young  men,  so  much  as  to  do  a  Chris- 
tian work  of  watchfulness  and  care,  and  loving  and  brotherly 
regard,  among  all  young  men,  even  though  they  be  ever 
so  remote  from  recognized  association  with  Christian 
churches  or  Christian  people." 

The  essayist  does  not  propose,  he  says,  "to  inquire  just 
how  far  we  have,  here  and  there,  drifted  away  from  this 
original  object;  but  I  think  that  the  fact  is  indisputable. 
A  great  many  worthy  enterprises,  now  in  behalf  of  ignorant 
multitudes  about  us,  and  now  for  suffering  ones  farther 
away  from  us,  have  more  or  less  largely  engaged  our  thoughts 
and  absorbed  our  efforts.  Do  I  need  to  say  how  fully  per- 
suaded I  am  that  these  good  works  have  been  thoroughly 
good,  and,  as  I  doubt  not,  have  been  owned  and  blessed 
by  God?  Results  at  which  we  must  all  rejoice  are  too 
plain  here  to  be  misunderstood  or  explained  away.  But 
all  the  while,  the  original  purpose  and  covenant  of  this 
Association  remains  and  binds  us." 

As  for  the  methods  by  which  this  work  may  be  accom- 
plished, the  paper  does  not  suggest  details,  but  this  sig- 
nificant thing  it  does  say :  "Any  machinery  will  be  incom- 
plete which  does  not  take  in  the  whole  man,  which  does 
not  recognize  all  the  various  needs  of  a  youth  in  a  great 
city,  and  seek  to  meet  and  answer  them."  "There  is  a 
craving,"  says  the  essayist,  "for  congenial  society,  for 
healthful  recreation,  for  books,  for  something  which  shall 
recall  the  precious  fragrance  of  home ;  above  all,  for  sym- 
pathy, however  and  wherever  it  may  be  expressed."  He 
deplores  the  remoteness  of  the  stranger  from  the  privilege 


56  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

of  uplifting  society,  and  wishes  that  "many  homes  could 
be  made  to  open  somewhat  more  easily  to  other  demands 
than  those  furnished  by  the  strict  etiquette  of  social  dis- 
crimination." He  suggests  mental  and  physical  recrea- 
tion as  a  part  of  the  province  of  the  Association.  "Happy 
shall  we  be/'  he  concludes,  "if  by  God's  blessing  upon  our 
poor  endeavors  we  can  save  our  youth,  and  in  these  anxious 
and  eventful  hours  raise  up  for  the  defence  of  truth  and 
freedom,  and  the  labor  of  Christ,  a  mighty  and  resistless 
host  of  regenerate,  and  Christian  young  men." 

Dr.  Doggett,  president  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  College,  in  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  two  events  had  at  that  time 
diverted  the  Association  from  their  original  social  mission 
to  young  men.  One  was  the  Civil  War  then  in  progress, 
the  other  was  the  great  revival  of  religion  in  1857-1858. 
"These  conditions,"  says  Dr.  Doggett,  "had  led  Associa- 
tion leaders  into  rescue  work  and  evangelistic  endeavor." 
The  society  was  conducting  a  kind  of  church  instead  of 
conducting  a  kind  of  parish  house.  No  change  was  made 
in  this  respect  for  several  years  after  the  Boston  Conven- 
tion, but  the  address  of  Mr.  Potter  was  one  of  the  begin- 
nings of  the  movement  which  eventually  brought  the  As- 
sociation back  to  its  original  and  distinctive  purpose. 

"So  far  as  I  know,"  says  Dr.  Doggett,  "this  was  the 
first  suggestion  that  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion should  work  for  the  whole  man.  In  educational 
circles,  Froebel  and  his  followers  have  maintained  that 
education  should  be  of  the  whole  personality,  but  I  do  not 
know  of  any  previous  statement  that  religious  effort  should 
be  so  directed  by  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association. 
When  it  is  recalled  that  at  the  time  he  made  this  address 
almost  the  entire  effort  of  the  Association  was  along  evan- 
gelistic lines,  the  significance  of  the  statement  is  more 
obvious.  His  idea  to  work  for  the  whole  man  and  supply 
all  his  needs  in  the  Christian  spirit  brought  with  it  all  the  di- 
versified methods  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association." 


A  WAR-TIME   RECTORSHIP  57 

By  this  time,  the  rector  of  St.  John's  had  become  known 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  his  prosperous  parish.  In  1862, 
on  the  nomination  of  Dr.  Heman  Dyer,  he  had  been  elected 
rector  of  Christ  Church,  Cincinnati,  but  had  declined. 
In  1863,  he  had  been  made  a  Master  of  Arts  by  Union 
College.  In  the  same  year  he  had  been  called  to  St.  Paul's, 
Albany,  with  whose  evangelical  spirit  he  was  in  sympathy. 
The  trustees  of  Kenyon  College  asked  him  if  he  would  ac- 
cept the  presidency.  In  1865,  Union  College  conferred 
upon  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity ;  at  the  same 
time  honoring  with  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  Edwin  M. 
Stanton  and  Ulysses  S.  Grant. 

In  April,  1866,  to  the  dismay  of  his  parishioners,  he  ac- 
cepted a  call  from  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  to  become 
Assistant  Minister  on  the  Greene  Foundation. 

"That  the  blessing  of  God  may  attend  you  in  your  new 
charge,  and  that  manifestations  of  His  favor  may  wait 
upon  your  ministry  as  they  have  been  evinced  during  your 
rectorship  among  us ;  that  you  may  be  supported  in  your 
labors  by  a  united  and  happy  people,  and  find  hearts  to 
welcome  you  as  kind  as  those  whose  benedictions  will  fol- 
low you,  is  the  sincere  prayer  of  your  devoted  and  faith- 
ful friends  and  servants."  Thus  affectionately  the  vestry 
of  St.  John's  bade  him  farewell. 

When  he  left  Troy  a  hundred  young  men  came  down  to 
the  station  to  see  him  off. 


CHAPTER  V 

AN  ASSISTANT   MINISTER   ON  THE   GREENE    FOUNDATION 

1866-1868 

DR.  POTTER  went  abroad  in  the  summer  of  1866,  and 
on  his  return  was  very  unexpectedly  appointed  secretary 
of  the  House  of  Bishops.  He  has  himself  described  in  his 
"Reminiscences  of  Bishops  and  Archbishops"  the  informal 
circumstances  of  his  appointment. 

Entering  the  port  of  New  York,  and  glancing  over  the 
newspapers  which  the  pilot  brought  on  board,  he  chanced 
to  notice  that  an  old  friend  and  fellow-student  in  the  Vir- 
ginia Seminary,  Channing  Moore  Williams,  was  to  be 
consecrated  that  morning  Bishop  of  China  and  Japan. 
The  service  was  to  take  place  in  St.  John's  Chapel  of  Trinity 
Parish.  Dr.  Potter  resolved  to  go.  There  was  a  meagre 
congregation.  The  romance  of  missions  had  not  yet 
aroused  the  enthusiasm  of  church  people.  The  sermon 
was  ended,  the  bishop-elect  was  duly  consecrated. 

"At  this  point  the  late  Bishop  of  Connecticut  (the  Right 
Rev.  John  Williams)  walked  across  the  chancel  to  where 
my  predecessor,  Bishop  Horatio  Potter,  was  standing, 
pointed  towards  the  pew,  in  a  side  aisle,  in  which  I  was 
seated,  and  whispered  in  Bishop  Potter's  car.  The  latter 
turned,  looked  towards  me,  nodded  his  head,  and  im- 
mediately left  the  chancel,  passed  into  a  vestibule  ad- 
joining it,  and  thence  into  the  body  of  the  church.  Ad- 
vancing (in  his  episcopal  robes,  be  it  remembered  !)  down 
the  aisle  to  the  door  of  the  pew  in  which  I  was  kneeling, 
he  leaned  his  elbow  on  the  door,  and,  bending  over,  said, 
'Henry,  how  would  you  like  to  be  Secretary  of  the  House 
of  Bishops?' 

58 


ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION       59 

"  I  mention  the  incident  as  furnishing  a  reminder  of  the 
great  change  for  the  better  which,  since  then,  has  come  to 
pass  in  the  matter  of  appropriate  usages  in  church.  Bishop 
Horatio  Potter  was  an  exceptionally  devout  man,  and 
distinguished  by  unusual  reverence  in  his  bearing,  in  any 
sacred  edifice.  And  yet,  what  he  did  was  utterly  unre- 
marked then,  while  it  would  now  be  thought  impossible 
for  any  bishop  to  do  anything  of  the  sort. 

"The  situation  in  the  House  of  Bishops  was  at  that  time 
peculiar.  The  clergyman  who  had  been  its  secretary  had 
removed  to  a  foreign  country  and  had  accepted  there  a 
cure  of  considerable  dignity  and  importance,  but  had  not 
resigned  his  office  as  Secretary  of  the  House  of  Bishops. 
He  had  cherished  the  idea  of  retaining  this  office,  it  was 
said,  in  the  hope  of  binding  thus  together  two  peoples  of 
a  common  lineage  and  common  speech.  But  whatever 
his  hope  or  purpose,  the  House  of  Bishops  did  not  concur 
with  him  in  his  view  of  the  conditions  under  which  he 
might  retain  his  office  as  its  secretary,  and  promptly  de- 
clared that  office  vacant.  The  unexpectedness  of  the 
emergency ;  the  necessity  for  some  immediate  provision 
to  meet  it ;  the  chance  presence  of  a  youth  who  was  as 
likely  as  anybody  else  to  be  an  inoffensive  secretary,  must, 
I  presume,  explain  what  followed.  I  was  elected  by  a 
viva  voce  vote,  and,  I  believe,  nemine  contradicente,  and 
thus  entered  upon  an  office  for  which  I  had  not  had  the 
slightest  training,  and  in  which  I  had  not  even  the 
most  meagre  experience." 

This  office  he  held  until  his  election  to  the  episcopate  in 
1883. 

The  House  of  Bishops  meeting  with  closed  doors,  the 
functions  of  a  secretary  to  that  body  can  only  be  inferred 
from  observation  of  secretarial  duties  in  general,  but  one 
ceremony  in  connection  with  the  office  is  not  only  open 
and  public,  but  conspicuous.  The  fact  that  the  two  branches 
of  the  ecclesiastical  legislature,  the  House  of  Bishops  and 
the  House  of  Clerical  and  Lay  Deputies,  meet  separately, 


60  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

necessitates  a  communication  of  legislative  actions  from 
one  house  to  the  other  in  order  that  debate  may  be  held 
upon  the  question  of  concurrence.  Thus  communications 
from  the  Bishops  are  brought  to  the  Deputies  by  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  House  of  Bishops.  The  pending  debate  is 
thereupon  interrupted,  and  the  message  is  formally  re- 
ceived. This  picturesque  duty  came  now  into  the  province 
of  Dr.  Potter. 

"A  few  of  us  are  left/'  says  Dr.  Richards,  "who  can 
recall  his  splendid  entrances  as  secretary  bearing  a  message 
from  the  upper  house  to  the  lower  one.  He  stood  at  the 
door  of  the  middle  aisle  in  an  attitude,  of  humble  expectancy 
until  he  was  noticed  by  the  presiding  officer  with  the  magic 
words  'A  Message  from  the  House  of  Bishops!'  Then 
with  measured  and  stately  tread,  with  the  dignity  of  the 
bearer  of  an  important  document,  with  the  modesty  of 
one  who  stood  in  the  presence  of  the  historic  clergy  and 
laity  duly  assembled,  he  paced  the  aisle  to  the  platform, 
stood  with  gravity  while  the  President  announced  the  con- 
tents of  the  message,  and  then,  his  duty  discharged,  moved 
slowly  to  the  door  by  which  he  had  entered.  Xo  blare  of 
trumpets  or  splendor  of  costume  could  have  added  any- 
thing to  the  great  occasion.  Augustus  Hoppin,  the  artist, 
was  one  of  the  deputies  from  Rhode  Island,  and  in  a 
clever  sketch  caught  the  humor  of  the  scene.  Potter  heard 
of  it,  insisted  on  seeing  it,  enjoyed  a  hearty  laugh  at  his  own 
expense,  and  thereafter  entrusted  the  delivery  of  messages 
to  his  excellent  assistant." 

The  Greene  Foundation  upon  which  Dr.  Potter  became 
Assistant  Minister  in  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  had  been 
established  in  1703  by  the  heirs  of  Thomas  Greene,  Esq., 
one  of  the  original  proprietors.  They  gave  five  hundred 
pounds  sterling,  and  the  trustees  of  the  Foundation  added 
a  like  sum,  the  interest  to  be  used  "towards  providing 
and  supporting  an  Assistant  Minister  as  aforesaid  and  to 
no  other  use  whatever." 

The   Rules  of  the  Trustees  for  the  Observation  of  the 


ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION       61 

Assistant  Minister  provided  that  he  should  "read  Prayers 
and  Preach,  once  every  Sunday,  Morning  or  Evening,  as 
shall  be  most  convenient  for  the  stated  Minister;  read 
Prayers  alternately  on  the  Holy  Days,  and  perform  the 
whole  Parochial  service  when  the  Minister  shall  be  sick, 
or  otherwise  necessarily  absent."  He  was  forbidden  to 
perform  any  part  of  duty  that  is  "attended  with  a  per- 
quisite" without  the  consent  of  the  Incumbent  or  Stated 
Minister.  In  view  of  difficulties  which  might  arise  between 
the  two  ministers,  it  was  ordered  that  "if  at  any  time  a 
difference  of  opinion  shall  happen  between  the  Minister 
and  the  Assistant  as  to  any  part  of  the  duty  which  the 
former  may  require  of  the  latter,  the  same  shall  be  referred 
to,  and  determined  by  the  Wardens  and  Vestry." 

Under  these  provisions,  the  duties  of  this  office  had  been 
performed  since  1763  by  a  number  of  clergymen  of  unusual 
distinction.  Samuel  Parker  had  become  bishop  of  Massa- 
chusetts ;  George  Washington  Doane  had  become  bishop  of 
New  Jersey ;  John  Henry  Hopkins  had  become  bishop 
of  Vermont ;  and  Thomas  March  Clark  had  become  bishop 
of  Rhode  Island.  One  day,  long  after,  when  Dr.  Potter 
was  inspecting  the  new  Trinity  Church  under  the  guidance 
of  Dr.  Brooks,  they  came  to  the  great  chancel  whose  wall 
exhibited  a  vast  expanse  of  unadorned  surface  painted 
green.  "Henry,"  said  Brooks,  "can't  you  suggest  some 
appropriate  decoration  for  this  green  wall?"  "Yes,"  said 
Potter,  "I  would  suggest  a  procession  of  the  Assistant 
Ministers  on  the  Greene  Foundation!" 

The  rector  under  whom  Dr.  Potter  was  appointed  to 
serve  was  Bishop  Eastburn.  He  was  then  sixty-five  years 
of  age,  and  had  been  Bishop  of  Massachusetts  since  1842. 
The  diocese  was  too  poor  to  pay  the  whole  salary  of  a 
bishop ;  he  must  be  at  the  same  time  the  rector  of  a  local 
church.  Several  weeks  of  episcopal  visitation  sufficed  to 
enable  the  bishop  to  look  after  his  few  parishes.  Except 
for  a  month  in  the  spring  and  another  month  in  the  fall, 
his  time  was  free  to  attend  to  his  parochial  work. 


62  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

There  had  been  some  disagreement  concerning  the  Assist- 
ant Minister  in  the  early  days  of  Bishop  Eastburn's  in- 
cumbency, giving  occasion  for  half  a  dozen  brisk  pam- 
phlets, which  are  dated  in  1845,  1846,  and  1847.  The 
rector  requested  the  assistant  to  resign,  declaring  that 
they  differed  "in  points  of  such  vital  and  essential  im- 
portance" that  he  could  not  leave  him  in  charge  of  the 
parish  "without  anxiety  on  its  behalf."  The  differences 
had  to  do  with  the  current  disagreement  between  "high 
church"  and  "low  church."  Bishop  Eastburn  was  a  low 
churchman.  Some  of  the  parishioners  took  one  side  of 
the  debate  and  some  the  other.  One  of  the  vestry  went 
so  far  as  to  remind  the  bishop,  in  a  printed  letter,  of  his 
ordination  vow  to  maintain  and  set  forward  quietness, 
peace  and  love  among  all  men. 

This  sharp  difference  had  now  become  a  matter  of  old 
tradition,  and  although  Bishop  Eastburn's  churchmanship 
remained  unmitigated,  and  his  natural  force  in  the  ex- 
pression of  his  convictions  was  by  no  means  abated,  the 
new  Assistant  Minister  found  him  an  interesting  and  con- 
genial person  to  live  with.  "I  was  so  much  the  bishop's 
junior  that,  from  the  outset,  his  intercourse  with  me 
was  alike  affectionate  and  unreserved."  Dr.  Potter 
long  remembered  his  first  dinner  with  his  chief  after 
his  appointment,  when  the  bishop,  visibly  uncomfort- 
able and  perplexed,  finally  offered  the  assistant  a  cigar, 
saying  as  he  did  so,  "Dr.  Potter,  I  presume  that 
you  don't  smoke?"  and  then,  delighted  at  finding  the 
cigar  accepted,  said  with  profound  relief,  "I  was  afraid 
that  you  had  inherited  the  detestable  prejudice's  of  your 
father!" 

The  Assistant  Minister  found  a  house  at  Longwood. 
There  were  now  three  babies,  ready  to  romp  with  him 
when  he  came  home  tired  from  his  parochial  duties.  They 
all  got  down  on  the  floor  together  before  the  nursery  fire, 
and  were  changed  into  lions  and  bears,  until  Mrs.  Potter 
came  in  to  give  them  the  scolding  which  they  deserved. 


ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION       63 

"And,  Henry/'  she  said,  "your  coat  is  quite  new;  you 
seem  to  forget  that.  It  will  be  ruined." 

Commonly,  the  young  parson  was  very  particular  about 
his  clothes.  That  well-groomed  appearance  which  his 
companions  noticed  in  the  seminary  was  characteristic  of 
him.  His  sister  remembered  him  in  his  teens,  a  gorgeous 
vision,  "in  a  dark  red  velvet  waistcoat,  with  jewelled 
buttons,  a  cravat  of  some  other  color,  and  pins  and  rings." 
It  was  pleasant  to  him  to  be  clad  in  bright  array.  In  later 
years  he  liked  to  wear  the  resplendent  red  gown  which  he 
brought  back  from  England  after  Cambridge  gave  him  a 
doctor's  degree  in  laws. 

The  first  sermon  of  the  new  assistant  found  its  text  in 
the  Ninety-sixth  Psalm  —  "Honor  and  majesty  are  before 
him  —  strength  and  beauty  are  in  his  sanctuary."  The 
texts  and  topics  of  the  forty  sermons  which  followed,  as 
noted  in  the  Blank  Book,  represent  his  ministry  in  Boston. 
The  second  sermon,  preached  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  was 
published  by  request  of  the  congregation.  The  subject 
was  "Individual  Responsibility  to  the  Nation."  The 
reader  misses  the  flowing  eloquence  of  the  sermon  of  the 
year  before.  The  preacher  is  more  restrained  in  his  manner. 
He  quotes  fromBacon's  "Essays/'  and  from  Niebuhr's  "Lec- 
tures on  Roman  History,"  and  refers  to  Titian's  picture  of 
Charles  the  Fifth  on  horseback.  He  apparently  thinks 
that  Boston  is  different  from  Troy.  When,  however,  he 
gets  fairly  into  his  sermon,  he  addresses  the  community 
in  which  he  lives  not  only  as  a  preacher  but  as  a  citizen. 
The  note  is  sounded  which  was  heard  in  Troy,  and  which 
was  audible  thereafter  in  all  the  notable  sermons  of  his 
ministry.  It  is  plain  that  he  has  interests  which  extend 
beyond  all  the  ordinary  ecclesiastical  boundaries.  He  is 
concerned  with  the  duties  which  men  owe  to  the  state  as 
well  as  to  the  church.  He  is  aware  of  the  need  of  purify- 
ing not  only  the  personal  life  but  the  public  life  of  the 
nation. 

"Is  it  not  possible,"  he  says,  "that  that  habit,  which 


64  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

we  learned  during  the  four  years  of  our  sore  trial,  of  sum- 
moning men  to  very  high  and  sacred  responsibilities,  with 
very  careless  and  superficial  scrutiny  of  their  personal 
character,  lingers  among  us  in  its  perilous  effects  still? 
Are  we  as  careful  as  formerly  to  see  to  it,  all  over  the  land, 
that  the  various  branches  of  government,  in  the  State  and 
in  the  Nation,  are  filled  by  pure  and  upright  men?  Are 
there  no  facts  concerning  our  municipal  and  other  elections 
in  some  of  the  chief  centres  of  our  wealth  and  civilization, 
which,  as  we  look  across  the  sea,  and  take  note  of  their 
impression  on  older  peoples  and  empires,  may  well  make 
us  blush?  Is  there  no  venality  in  even  our  most  venerable 
legislative  bodies?  Are  our  public  servants  always  and 
everywhere  men  who  will  be  sure  to  resist  the  powers  of 
corruption,  and  to  consult  only  the  highest  interests  of 
their  constituents?  Nay,  more,  to  go  behind  these  evils 
on  the  surface  to  the  malady  which  is  their  root,  do  we 
recognize  and  discharge  our  separate  responsibility  as 
citizens?  Are  we  careful  to  make  our  personal  influence 
everywhere  felt :  at  the  ballot-box,  in  the  primary  meet- 
ing, in  our  social  and  political  conferences ;  by  all  the  testi- 
mony of  our  daily  speech  and  life?" 

It  is  a  true  saying  that  most  preachers,  even  very  eminent 
ones,  have  only  two  or  three  sermons.  These  they  preach 
over  and  over,  from  many  different  texts,  with  many  changes 
of  illustration  and  of  application,  throughout  their  ministry. 
This  was  one  of  Dr.  Potter's  sermons,  this  insistence  on 
political  righteousness.  This  he  understood  to  be  a  great 
part  of  the  business  of  the  Christian  religion.  He  put  it 
up  to  the  conscience  of  the  Christian  citizen.  He  had 
another  sermon  in  which  he  protested  against  the  extrava- 
gance, prodigality,  ostentation,  selfishness,  and  worldli- 
ness  of  social  life.  This  was  for  women,  as  the  political 
.sermon  was  for  men. 

This  also  had  a  place  in  the  Thanksgiving  Sermon  of 
1SGG.  "No  man  or  woman,"  he  says,  "has  a  right  to  in- 
dulge in  habits  of  luxury  or  extravagance  hurtful  to  the 


ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION       65 

community  around  them.  They  are  deteriorating  the 
whole  body  politic  by  their  bad  example.  .  .  .  There 
were  great  dynasties  that  once  covered  the  earth  with 
tokens  of  their  wealth  and  strength,  more  splendid,  even, 
than  any  that  greet  our  eyes  to-day.  And  from  out  the 
ashes  of  their  long-perished  grandeur  we  may  read  our 
possible  future.  They  were  not  the  victims  of  conquest ; 
they  did  not  perish  through  internal  dissensions ;  they 
simply  rotted  to  death  by  the  cancerous  decay  of  an  enervat- 
ing luxury  and  extravagance." 

The  Blank  Book  contains  the  texts  and  subjects  of  five 
hundred  sermons,  beginning  with  the  Power  of  the  Gospel ; 
and  ending  with  Christ's  Headship  of  the  Church,  preached 
in  New  York  in  1870.  Much  of  the  book  is  occupied  with 
texts,  and  suggestions  for  sermons  thereupon.  One  page 
is  headed  "Thoughts  on  Preaching."  "Many,"  he  says, 
"think  to  be  original  by  taking  quaint  and  odd  texts. 
Commonplaces  tacked  on  to  startling  texts  only  make  the 
contrast  more  marked  and  unsatisfying."  "Many  parsons 
dealing  with  texts  are  like  a  fly  crawling  over  an  apple : 
they  go  all  over  it,  all  around  it,  but  they  don't  get  into  it. 
They  do  not  get  into  its  spirit.  So  again,  many  preachers 
are  like  humming  birds  :  they  go  buzzing  about  a  flower 
through  most  of  the  half  hour,  and  at  last,  just  as  it  is  time 
to  stop,  settle  down  on  the  central  truth.  It  is  a  great 
thing  to  go  straight  to  the  point ;  it  avoids  dissipating 
attention.  When  you  have  once  got  it,  then  you  can  pre- 
sent it  in  as  many  lights  as  you  please."  "Find  out  dis- 
tinctly before  undertaking  to  preach  on  a  text,  why  you 
are  attracted  to  it.  Sometimes  a  verse  or  passage  incites 
our  emotion,  but  feeling  is  not  thought.  What  you  want 
is  an  idea." 

"Be  content  to  make  a  single  point.  Better  impress 
one  clearly  than  a  dozen  vaguely." 

"No  sermon  is  worth  much  which  does  not  prove  some- 
thing; or  quicken  us  to  'hold  that  which  is  good.'  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  doubtful  whether  merely  dry,  hard,  logical, 


66  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

argumentative  preaching  is  not,  of  all  kinds,  the  least 
profitable.  Preaching,  after  all,  to  be  effective,  must 
reach  the  heart.  That  is  what  the  gospel  aims  to  do. 
That  is  Christ's  way.  Merely  argumentative  preaching 
is  like  a  diamond,  clear-cut,  sparkling,  but  cold,  hard, 
unfeeling.  Christ's  preaching  was  like  the  expression  of 
the  human  face,  full  of  emotion,  love,  scorn,  pity,  right- 
eous anger,  entreaty." 

This  ministry  was  interrupted  in  the  spring  of  1868  by 
a  call  from  Grace  Church,  New  York.  In  March  he  wrote 
to  Dr.  Dyer,  "I  thank  you  heartily  for  your  kind  note  of 
the  14th,  which  has  helped  to  steady  me  in  a  decision 
which  I  have  approached,  improbable  as  it  may  seem  to 
many,  with  great  reluctance  and  which  I  shall  make  at 
no  inconsiderable  sacrifice  of  personal  ease  and  freedom 
from  responsibility.  I  shall  probably  be  in  New  York 
about  the  last  Sunday  in  April." 

On  the  13th  of  April,  the  vestry  of  Trinity  Church,  by 
the  hand  of  Mr.  John  C.  Ropes,  its  clerk,  transmitted  to 
its  retiring  assistant  minister  a  resolution  of  regret. 

"Resolved,  that  the  corporation  learn  with  profound 
regret  that  Dr.  Potter  has  decided  to  sever  his  connection 
with  this  church. 

"His  devoted  and  able  performance  of  every  duty,  the 
regard  and  affection  entertained  towards  him  by  all  who 
have  shared  his  ministrations,  the  uninterrupted  pros- 
perity spiritual  and  secular,  which  has  marked  his  residence 
among  us,  in  some  measure  indicate  the  loss  we  sustain. 

"We  should  be  ungrateful  for  the  benefits  we  have  de- 
rived from  his  pastoral  care,  did  we  not  invoke  the  best 
blessing  of  Providence  on  his  future  years,  with  the  devout 
trust  that,  whatever  his  field  of  usefulness,  his  service 
may  prove  as  acceptable,  and  that  he  may  be  as  beloved 
and  prospered,  as  in  this  parish." 

Dr.  Potter  suggested  to  the  disappointed  vestry,  or, 
at  least,  to  one  member  of  it,  that  a  suitable  rector  might 
be  found  for  Trinity  Church  in  the  person  of  one  of  his 


ASSISTANT  MINISTER  ON  THE  GREENE  FOUNDATION       67 

old  friends  at  the  Virginia  Seminary.  "He  told  me/'  says 
Colonel  Charles  R.  Codman,  "that  he  had  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  Phillips  Brooks  was  inclined  to  leave  Philadelphia, 
and  would  like  to  come  to  his  native  city  of  Boston.  This 
was  a  great  surprise  to  us,  but  we  at  once  acted  upon  the 
suggestion."  Boston  was  already  filled  with  Dr.  Brooks's 
fame.  His  prayer  at  the  Harvard  Commemoration  had 
revealed  him  to  the  community  as  a  man  who  talked  with 
God.  The  possibility  of  getting  him  gave  definite  direc- 
tion to  the  general  desire. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    ORGANIZATION   OF   A   WORKING   PARISH 
1868-1873 

THE  new  rector,  then  in  the  thirty-fourth  year  of 
his  age,  preached  his  first  sermon  in  Grace  Church  on 
Sunday,  April  26th,  1868.  His  subject  was  "A  Living 
Christ,  the  Power  of  a  Living  Religion."  "The  edifice 
was  well  filled,"  said  the  Times  in  an  inconspicuous  para- 
graph, and  the  "instructive  discourse  was  listened  to  with 
marked  attention."  Thus  quietly  the  New  York  ministry 
began. 

The  city  at  that  time  was  practically  bounded  by  Forty- 
second  Street.  Beyond  were  ill-paved  roads  between 
knolls  of  rock  inhabited  by  goats  and  squatters.  Down- 
town, Trinity  spire  soared  high  above  the  four-story  shops 
and  houses.  Complaints  were  made,  however,  of  the 
grievous  scarcity  of  residences  with  reasonable  rents,  and 
already,  in  1865,  attention  had  been  called  to  "the  Parisian 
plan  of  dividing  a  large  building  into  many  suites  of  apart- 
ments." 

The  President  of  the  United  States  was  then  on  trial 
looking  to  his  impeachment.  In  Mexico  a  revolution  was 
in  progress.  Hostile  Indians  were  making  trouble  in 
Nevada.  The  Kuklux  Klan  was  active  in  Mississippi. 
General  Xapier  was  scattering  the  troops  of  King  Theodore 
in  Abyssinia.  In  New  York,  Tweed  and  his  associates 
were  beginning  to  retreat. 

Lyman  Abbott  was  pastor  of  the  New  England  Congre- 
gational Society  in  East  Forty-first  Street,  John  Hall  was 
at  the  Fiftli  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church,  Thomas  Armitage 

68 


THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  A   WORKING   PARISH         69 

at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Baptist,  William  M.  Paxton  and 
Howard  Crosby  were  active  in  their  ministry,  Beecher 
and  Storrs  were  preaching  in  Brooklyn.  John  Cotton 
Smith  was  at  the  Ascension,  Edward  A.  Washburn  at 
Calvary,  Stephen  H.  Tyng  at  St.  George's,  Dr.  Morgan 
at  St.  Thomas's,  Dr.  Houghton  at  the  Transfiguration, 
Dr.  Ewer  at  Christ  Church,  Dr.  Dix  at  Trinity. 

Grace  parish  was  organized  in  1809,  and  the  present 
church  was  built  in  1846.  Dr.  Thomas  House  Taylor 
had  been  rector  for  thirty-three  years  (1834-1867).  The 
commanding  position  of  the  church,  at  the  turn  of  Broad- 
way, was  even  more  noticeable  than  it  is  now,  for  business, 
though  already  invading,  had  not  taken  possession  of  the 
neighborhood.  The  communicants,  however,  were  fewer 
in  number  than  those  whom  Dr.  Potter  had  left  in  Troy. 
In  1870  the  parish  reported  only  264. 

The  long  ministry  of  Dr.  Taylor  had  been  a  blessing  to 
his  people.  When  the  chimes  were  hung  in  the  tower  of 
Grace  Church,  in  1873,  the  Great  Bell  was  given  and  in- 
scribed in  his  memory:  "during  whose  rectorship  this 
building  was  erected  and  consecrated.  A  faithful  and 
affectionate  pastor,  a  godly  and  well-learned  divine.  A 
people  to  whom  he  ministered  for  thirty-three  years  here 
record  their  grateful  memory  of  his  labors  and  his  virtues." 

It  is  plain,  however,  that  Grace  Church,  when  Dr.  Potter 
came  to  it,  was  a  very  quiet  parish,  showing  much  evidence 
of  dignity  but  little  of  emotion,  and  proceeding  rather 
leisurely  upon  its  comfortable  way  towards  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  The  rectorship  of  Dr.  Taylor  belonged  to  a  time 
when  the  emphasis  was  on  the  ministration  of  the  church 
to  its  own  people.  They  were  assembled  of  a  Sunday  for 
a  service  consisting  of  the  Morning  Prayer,  the  Litany, 
and  the  Ante-Communion ;  the  children  were  taught  the 
Catechism  in  the  Sunday  School ;  their  mothers  had  a 
Sewing  Society ;  and  the  pastor  went  upon  the  regular 
round  of  faithful  visitation.  All  things  continued  as  they 
had  been  for  generations. 


70  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

The  rectorship  of  Dr.  Potter  belonged  to  a  time  when 
the  emphasis  was  on  the  ministration  of  the  church  to  the 
community.  The  purpose  was  to  bring  new  people  in, 
and  to  make  the  church  not  only  helpful  but  attractive  to 
them.  That  involved  the  shortening  and  enlivening  of 
the  services;  the  brightening  of  the  church  interior,  the 
adaptation  of  the  life  of  religion  to  the  condition  of  child- 
hood, the  endeavor  to  get  hold  of  the  unchurched,  to  help 
the  poor,  to  improve  the  common  life,  and  to  enlist  for 
these  purposes  the  energy  of  cooperating  parishioners. 

When  Dr.  Taylor  built  Grace  Chapel,  the  only  provision 
which  he  made  for  the  Sunday  School  and  all  other  parochial 
activity  was  in  a  dimly  lighted  and  ill-ventilated  basement, 
where  they  occupied  whatever  space  was  not  needed  for 
the  coal  bins  and  the  furnace.  In  so  doing  he  followed  the 
common  custom  of  that  day.  Dr.  Potter  found  the  build- 
ing wholly  inadequate  to  the  purposes  of  proper  parish  life, 
as  he  understood  it.  He  belonged  to  a  new  time.  He  rep- 
resented that  new  idea  of  the  mission  of  the  church  which 
in  the  fifties  and  sixties  and  seventies  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  introducing  such  novelties  as  Christmas  trees, 
and  choirs  of  men  and  boys,  and  daily  services  and  weekly 
communions,  and  flowers  at  Easter,  and  church  schools 
and  church  infirmaries,  and  parish  houses.  Dr.  Aluhlen- 
berg  was  the  apostle  of  this  movement,  but  Dr.  Potter 
was  an  enthusiastic  leader.  It  was  his  earnest  desire,  as 
he  had  said  while  he  was  still  at  Troy,  that  religion  should 
minister  to  the  whole  man. 

Dr.  Potter  found  already  existing  in  Grace  Church  a 
single  parish  society  :  an  Industrial  School  which  the  wife 
of  the  previous  rector  had  established.  It  was  gathering 
together  forty  children  from  the  poorer  families  of  the 
neighborhood,  to  teach  them  to  sew  and  to  provide  them 
with  clothing.  Within  a  year,  under  the  impetus  which  he 
gave,  the.  attendance  was  increased  to  a  hundred  and  thirty- 
five.  To  this  society  he  immediately  added  three  others,  and 
employed  in  addition  a  parish  visitor  and  a  Bible  reader. 


THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  A  WORKING  PARISH         71 

The  "  First  Annual  Report  of  the  Various  Departments 
of  Parish  Work  in  Grace  Church/'  — itself  a  novel  publica- 
tion —  breathes  in  every  page  the  spirit  of  newness.  The 
Ladies'  Benevolent  Society  "was  organized  a  year  ago  on 
the  10th  of  November"  (1868).  The  Ladies'  Domestic 
Missionary  Relief  Association  "was  organized  at  Grace 
Chapel,  October  17th,  1868."  St.  Luke's  Association  of 
Grace  Church  "was  organized  at  a  meeting  in  the  base- 
ment of  the  Chapel  on  the  23d  of  February  last"  (1869). 
The  Parish  Visitor  says,  "My  visits  for  the  Chapel  began 
November  1st,  1868."  The  work  of  the  Bible  reader  is 
presented  in  a  first  report.  These  were  immediate  results 
of  the  initiative  of  the  new  rector.  Under  his  leadership 
the  whole  parish  was  awakening  into  beneficent  activity. 
It  was  recognizing,  as  the  rector  said,  "the  high  claims  of 
Christian  obligation." 

In  the  Report  of  the  next  year  (1870)  each  of  the  parochial 
organizations  shows  an  increase  in  membership  and  in  ac- 
complishment. They  "have  all  enlarged  their  operations 
and  strengthened  themselves  in  the  affections  and  interest 
of  increased  numbers  of  people."  The  rector  urged  upon 
the  people  the  importance  of  living  the  religious  life  ac- 
cording to  a  systematic  plan. 

"The  experience  of  the  past  year,"  he  said,  "has  demon- 
strated the  manifold  advantages  of  an  organized  and  definite 
plan  or  system  of  Christian  service.  The  moment  that  one 
finds  an  opening  awaiting  him  in  which  to  do  something 
specific  at  a  specified  time  and  place,  it  becomes  far  easier 
to  undertake  it.  There  are  a  great  many  persons  in  any 
congregation  who  only  need  to  have  their  work  shown  to 
them  in  order  to  secure  its  being  promptly  and  cordially 
undertaken." 

This  usefulness  of  a  definite  plan  he  proceeded  to  urge 
upon  the  congregation  in  several  details. 

"1.  We  want  a  system  for  the  development  and  per- 
petuation of  household  religion  —  religion  in  the  family. 
We  must  have  these,  if  our  children  are  not  to  grow  up  into 


72  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

godless  unloveliness,  a  daily  rule  of  domestic  devotion,  of 
scriptural  instruction  and  of  training  and  nurture  in  Chris- 
tian song.  All  these  things,  too  much  neglected  among 
us,  are  vital  to  the  truest  welfare  of  every  child  in  our 
homes,  and  it  is,  under  God,  only  through  some  firmly 
fixed  and  faithfully  observed  system,  that  we  can  secure 
them. 

"2.  No  less  do  we  need  the  help  of  some  such  self-imposed 
rule  to  hold  us  to  that  wise  scheme  and  system  of  public 
worship  which  the  Church  in  her  services  has  already  es- 
tablished for  us.  Not  only  the  Sundays  but  the  holy-days, 
the  Advent  watchfulness,  the  Ember-day  pray  erf  ulness, 
the  Lenten  abstinence,  all  these  are  of  her  wise  ordering, 
meant  to  help  us,  and  most  fitly  arranged  to  do  so,  but 
needing  still  some  deliberately  assumed  determination  on 
our  part  that  we  will  reverence  this  order,  will  observe  and 
improve  these  sacred  opportunities,  and  so  in  prayer  and 
song  and  sacrament  oftener  draw  near  the  source  of  all 
strength  and  help  and  heavenly  inspiration. 

"3.  And  so,  too,  in  our  practical  endeavors  to  serve  and 
bless  our  fellows.  It  seems  hard  at  first  to  wrench  out 
from  the  busy  week  an  hour  or  two  to  teach  some  poor 
child,  to  minister  to  some  poor  man  or  woman,  to  care 
for  some  sick  sufferer,  or  to  think  of  the  wants  of  the  church's 
standard-bearers,  and  try  to  relieve  them  ;  but  a  fixed  rule 
helps  us  wonderfully  to  do  it,  and  makes  us  no  losers  when 
it  is  done. 

"Even  so  of  our  gifts.  Most  of  all  do  we  want,  in  regard 
to  them,  some  definite  plan  and  principle.  There  would 
be  far  less  irritation  under  what  we  call  the  'endless  calls' 
of  the  day  if  we  would  learn  to  discriminate  as  to  our  gifts 
on  some  sound  and  Christian  principle,  and  then  provide 
for  their  being  made  in  some  fixed  plan  —  money  being 
regularly  set  aside  for  certain  objects,  and  their  claim 
being  distinctly  put  in  the,  first  rank." 

The  passage  is  of  interest  not  only  for  its  value  as  a  wise 
counsel  in  religion,  but  for  its  disclosure  of  the  mind  of  the 


THE   ORGANIZATION  OF  A  WORKING   PARISH         73 

writer.  He  spoke  out  of  his  own  experience,  and  recom- 
mended that  which  he  had  already  proved.  As  he  enters 
in  these  paragraphs  into  the  plain  sight  of  the  reader  he  is 
perceived  to  have  a  quality  of  orderliness  which  was  ever 
characteristic  of  him.  It  is  revealed  in  every  detail  of 
these  little  early  year-books,  with  their  sequence  of  secre- 
tary's reports  and  treasurer's  reports,  their  record  of  even 
the  smallest  receipts  and  expenditures,  and  their  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  least  contributions  :  — 

"  1  box  of  needles,  bones,  pins  and  tape. 

"  1  velvet  bonnet. 

"1  gent's  hat. 

"6  linen  collars." 

He  did  not,  of  course,  draw  up  these  lists  himself,  certainly 
not  the  item  of  the  "gent's  hat"  —  but  he  set  the  pattern  : 
a  pattern  which  still  governs  the  year-books  of  Grace 
Church,  and  of  innumerable  other  churches  which  have 
followed  its  example. 

The  ordering  of  life  according  to  a  determined  system 
was  habitual  with  him.  His  days,  to  the  end  of  them, 
were  divided  and  assigned,  this  hour  to  one  duty,  that  to 
another.  It  was  in  this  manner  that  he  accomplished 
an  amount  of  work  which  to  the  onlooker  seemed  incredible, 
and  did  it  without  nervousness  or  over-strain.  Dr.  Edward 
0.  Flagg,  who  was  assistant  minister  with  him  for  six 
years,  says  that  he  looked  after  Grace  Church  like  a  good 
housekeeper.  He  allowed  no  disorder.  "No  confusion 
or  untidiness  was  found  anywhere,  but  system  and  com- 
pleteness were  discernible  from  vestibule  to  penetralia." 
And  Archdeacon  Nelson,  who  was  not  only  his  assistant 
at  Grace  Church  but  his  secretary  after  he  became  bishop, 
testifies  to  the  extraordinary  neatness  of  his  desk.  "Sys- 
tem," he  says,  "was  not  so  much  a  mechanical  regularity 
as  a  spell  of  'sweet  reasonableness'  under  which  his  work 
in  its  smallest  detail  as  well  as  in  its  largest  scope  found 
its  smooth  and  fitting  groove.  Everything  of  his  was  in 
its  place  and  never  allowed  to  get  out  of  its  place.  His 


74  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

desk  was  always  on  dress  parade,  though  always  in  action. 
His  papers  went  into  its  drawers  and  pigeonholes  in  single 
file  in  good  order,  and  stood  at  attention  ready  to  come 
out  in  like  manner." 

The  Annual  Report  of  1870  contained  a  proposition  to 
the  congregation  to  establish  a  Grace  House.  This  was 
of  a  piece  with  all  his  plans  for  making  the  parish  a  special 
force  in  the  community,  and  was  altogether  in  the  spirit 
of  the  advice  which  he  had  given  to  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  while  he  was  rector  of  St.  John's. 

"If  what  we  have  already  undertaken  to  do  for  others 
has  any  obvious  defect,"  he  said,  "it  is  that  it  does  not 
with  sufficient  directness  reach  and  minister  to  the  humblest 
and  least  cared-for  classes.  To  serve  these,  a  mission  must 
plant  itself  among  them ;  and  to  do  any  substantial  service 
it  must  be  a  many-sided  mission,  having  something  to  say 
to  those  to  whom  it  comes,  not  only  on  Sundays,  but  on 
week-days ;  something  to  say  to  the  bodies  of  those  whom 
it  would  fain  care  for,  as  well  as  to  their  souls ;  something 
to  do  for  their  physical  and  intellectual  pains  and  hungers, 
as  well  as  for  that  other  and  deeper  hunger  of  the  soul 
for  the  Bread  of  Life.  No  truly  Christian  endeavor  can 
leave  their  physical  and  intellectual  wants  out  of  account. 
Christ  never  did ;  His  Church  may  never  dare  to.  We 
must  reach  our  fellow-men  through  their  sympathies,  their 
affections,  their  awakened  intellectual  enthusiasm,  as  well 
as  through  their  spiritual  hopes  and  fears.  And  to  do 
this  a  House  is  wanted  which  shall  itself  be  a  centre  of 
Christian  education,  Christian  healing  of  body,  Christian 
entertainment,  Christian  compassion  and  benignity.  This 
House  must  be  something  more  than  a  Church,  opened 
only  on  Sundays,  and  on  a  week  evening  or  two,  but  closed 
and  cheerless  all  the  rest  of  the  week.  It  must  include  a 
Chapel  and  Lecture  Room,  a  Free  Dispensary,  and  a 
Free  Reading  Room,  a  Free  Church-School  Room,  with, 
perhaps,  a  Hull  for  Recreation,  and  apartments  for  the 
two  or  three  godly  women,  trained  under  such  auspices 


THE    ORGANIZATION   OP  A  WORKING   PARISH         75 

as  those  of  St.  Luke's  Hospital,  or  the  Bishop  Potter  Me- 
morial House  in  Philadelphia,  who  will  be  needed  to  carry 
on  such  a  work.  Plant  such  a  building  in  the  midst  of 
some  needy  district  in  this  great  city,  and  the  most  callous 
heart  will  understand  it." 

The  General  Convention  of  1871,  which  Dr.  Potter 
attended  as  secretary  to  the  House  of  Bishops,  was  oc- 
cupied during  a  considerable  part  of  its  session  in  the  en- 
deavor to  deal  with  the  difficulties  of  high  churchmen  on 
the  one  side  and  of  low  churchmen  on  the  other.  The 
general  church  was  in  a  nervous  state.  The  bishops  in 
England  were  perplexed  between  the  ritual  eccentricities 
of  Mr.  Mackonochie  and  the  doctrinal  novelties  of  Bishop 
Colenso.  In  this  country,  the  evangelical  brethren  were 
organizing  to  oppose  the  invasion  of  Anglo-Catholic  ideas. 
The  Rev.  Mr.  Tate  of  Ohio  had  been  tried  in  1869  "for 
violation  of  the  rubric,  in  the  introduction  of  a  surpliced 
choir."  In  the  same  year  the  Rev.  Mr.  Cheney  of  Illinois 
was  tried  for  omitting  from  the  service  of  baptism  the 
word  "regenerate."  Nine  low-church  bishops  had  me- 
morialized the  convention  to  relieve  the  consciences  of  their 
brethren  by  allowing  the  use  of  alternative  phrases  in 
critical  places  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

The  high-churchmen,  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  James 
De  Koven,  pleaded  for  a  liberty  of  ritual  which  the  Conven- 
tion decided  not  to  permit.  The  low-churchmen  were 
contented  for  the  moment  by  a  declaration  of  the  bishops 
to  the  effect  that  "the  word  l regenerate'  is  not  so  used 
[in  the  baptismal  services]  as  to  determine  that  a  moral 
change  in  the  subject  of  baptism  is  wrought  by  that  sacra- 
ment." 

The  most  important  action  of  the  Convention,  however, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  rector  of  Grace  Church,  was 
its  acceptance  of  the  report  of  a  committee,  of  which  he 
was  the  most  active  member,  on  the  organizing  of  the  work 
of  women  in  the  church.  The  matter  had  been  brought 
before  the  Board  of  Missions  in  1869,  and  the  Board  in 


76  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

1870,  recognizing  "the  tested  value  of  organization  of 
trained  laity,  and  especially  of  Christian  women,"  ap- 
pointed this  committee  to  consider  "'the  best  means  of 
associating  the  organized  or  individual  efforts  of  women 
with  the  missionary  and  educational  work  of  the  church." 

An  immediate  result  of  this  action  was  the  establishment 
in  1871  of  the  Woman's  Auxiliary  to  the  Board  of  Missions. 
It  had  its  origin  and  pattern  in  the  Ladies'  Domestic  Mis- 
sionary Relief  Association,  "whose  branches,"  the  com- 
mittee said,  "exist  in  parishes  scattered  all  over  the  land," 
and  which  Dr.  Potter  had  introduced  into  Grace  Church, 
in  1868. 

A  further  result  was  to  arouse  general  interest  in  the 
matter  of  sisterhoods  and  deaconesses. 

The  Sisterhood  of  the  Holy  Communion  had  been  founded 
in  1845  under  the  pastoral  care  of  Dr.  Muhlenberg.  The 
sisters  lived  under  a  simple  rule,  which  provided  that  they 
should  dress  alike,  "and  as  plainly  and  inexpensively  as 
possible,"  that  they  should  live  under  rule,  yielding  "a 
cheerful  obedience  in  all  things  pertaining  to  the  order- 
ing of  the  community,  and  the  work  given  it  to  do,"  and 
that  they  should  give  their  whole  time  to  their  duties, 
receiving  the  visits  of  relatives  and  friends  only  during  the 
specified  hours  of  recreation.  The  term  of  service  in  the 
Sisterhood  was  set  at  three  years,  renewable,  if  desired. 
The  sisters  were  at  first  engaged  in  parochial  work,  minis- 
tering to  the  poor  and  teaching  in  the  Parish  School  of  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Communion.  Later,  the  Community 
took  charge  of  work  in  St.  Luke's  Hospital.  This  was  the 
first  Protestant  association  of  the  kind  in  this  country. 

The  Order  of  Deaconesses  of  the  Diocese  of  Maryland 
had  been  founded  in  1855;  in  St.  Andrew's  Parish,  Balti- 
more, whose  rector  was  the  Rev.  Horace  Stringfellow. 
Two  devout  women  consecrated  themselves,  under  his 
pastoral  care,  to  the  work  of  ministering  to  the  poor.  The 
bishop  of  the  diocese  approved,  a  house  was  secured  for 
their  residence,  and  others,  resident  and  associate,  joined 


them.  They  were  formally  admitted  to  be  "servants  of 
the  Church  of  God  as  deaconesses."  The  bishop  in  a 
public  service  received  them  with  counsels  and  prayers 
and  the  giving  of  the  right  hand  of  fellowship.  They 
assumed  "an  economical  habit,"  observed  six  Hours  of 
Prayer,  and  lived  under  rule. 

The  examples  thus  set  had  been  followed  in  various 
parts  of  the  country.  Sisterhoods  had  been  founded  in 
Baltimore,  in  New  York,  and  in  Washington.  Deaconesses 
had  been  set  apart  for  the  work  of  the  ministry  in  Alabama 
and  in  Long  Island ;  a  School  for  the  Training  of  Women 
Helpers  had  been  established  in  Philadelphia  in  memory 
of  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter. 

These  innovations  upon  the  customary  life  of  the  church 
had  met  with  the  protest  and  prejudice  natural  to  a  genera- 
tion unused  to  novelty  and  suspicious  of  it.  The  Women's 
Work  Committee  of  the  Board  of  Missions  protected  those 
who  were  striving  to  revive  ancient  orders  and  agencies 
from  the  imputation,  as  Dr.  Potter  phrased  it,  "that  they 
are  unfaithful  to  the  church's  reformed  character  or  dis- 
tinctive standing."  The  Report  of  the  Committee  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  women  were  being  continually 
summoned  to  give,  —  but  what  ?  "  Money,  garments,  tracts 
-  anything  and  everything,  save  that  which  their  Lord 
wants  first  and  most,  and  that  is  themselves,  wholly,  ab- 
solutely and  unreservedly,  in  a  life  and  service  consecrated 
to  Him  and  His,  forever."  And  it  added  "Even  what 
they  do  give  of  service  or  of  thought  for  Christ's  poor  or 
ignorant  ones,  under  our  present  system  or  want  of  system, 
they  can  only  give  in  a  desultory,  half-hearted,  spasmodic 
way." 

The  Committee  recommended  the  formation  of  sister- 
hoods, parochial  and  diocesan,  and  they  urged  upon  the 
Board  of  Missions  "as  a  very  important  means  of  enabling 
the  Church  to  avail  itself  of  the  organized  efforts  of  women, 
what  is  known  in  our  Mother  Church  of  England  as  the 
order  of  Deaconesses."  The  House  of  Bishops  in  its  Pas- 


78  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

toral  Letter  of  that  year  (1871)  so  far  adopted  the  Report 
of  the  Committee  as  to  speak  of  "the  revival  of  the  Scrip- 
tural diaconate  of  women"  in  words  which  were  discreetly 
conservative  but  not  discouraging.  The  bishops  recognized 
the  fact  that  such  a  revival  was  actively  in  progress.  "We 
feel  an  earnest  desire,"  they  said,  "that  prudence  and 
good  sense  may  preside  over  every  effort." 

Dr.  Potter  took  this  cautious  approbation  as  the  text 
of  a  sermon  in  December,  1871,  on  "Woman's  Place  and 
Work  in  the  Church."  The  subject  was  not  at  that  time 
complicated  by  any  political  debate ;  neither  did  the 
preacher  venture  far  into  the  question  as  to  the  possibility 
of  women's  preaching.  He  referred,  not  without  sympathy, 
to  a  recent  sermon  by  Henry  Ward  Beecher  which  main- 
tained that  "no  one  can  at  once  inculcate  and  illustrate 
that  spirit  of  love  which  breathes  through  the  New  Testa- 
ment as  can  a  woman."  But  his  theme  was  the  minis- 
tration of  women  under  organization.  "Why  shall  not 
we,  too,  have  sisters  of  charity?  Shall  we  be  guilty  of  the 
weakness  of  despising  a  good  instrument  because  we  find 
it  in  bad  company?"  As  for  deaconesses,  there  they  are 
in  the  Xcw  Testament.  "Help  those  women,"  says  St. 
Paul,  "which  have  labored  with  me  in  the  gospel."  The 
meaning  is  not  satisfied  by  the  supposition  that  "these 
were  simply  estimable  mothers  or  daughters  of  families 
who  gave  to  the  founding  of  the  infant  church  at  Philippi 
merely  such  snatches  of  time  as  they  were  able  to  rescue 
from  other  engagements."  And  take  that  other  place, 
in  which  the  apostle  prescribes  the  duties  and  virtues  neces- 
sary to  the  wives  of  deacons  ;  the  Greek  says  nothing  about 
the  wives  of  deacons.  St.  Paul  is  speaking  of  the  women- 
deacons,  the  deaconesses.  "We  want,"  said  the  preacher, 
"for  a  large  class  of  persons  in  the  church,  the  manifold 
advantages  of  a  definite  organization  and  a  definite  com- 
mission." 

It  was  in  the  furtherance  of  this  idea  that  Dr.  Potter 
published  in  1872  a  book  entitled  "Sisterhoods  and  Deacon- 


THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  A  WORKING  PARISH         79 

esses  at  Home  and  Abroad."  It  begins  with  the  Report 
of  the  Committee  on  Women's  Work,  to  which  he  appends 
letters  addressed  to  him,  as  helps  in  the  preparation  of  the 
Report,  by  experienced  and  distinguished  persons  in  the 
English  Church,  —  the  Bishops  of  London,  of  Manchester, 
of  Salisbury,  the  Rev.  Bcrdmore  Compton,  secretary  of 
the  Deaconesses'  Institution,  Miss  Longley,  daughter  of 
the  late  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Miss  Frere,  daughter 
of  Sir  Bartle  Frere.  The  body  of  the  book  is  occupied  with 
the  actual  rules  in  operation  in  each  of  the  sisterhoods  and 
orders  of  deaconesses  then  existing  in  America  and  in 
England,  together  with  the  services  used  in  the  admission 
of  members.  It  is  thus  a  working  manual,  designed  to 
bring  down  out  of  the  clouds  the  common  discussion  of 
women's  work  in  the  church,  and  to  impart  to  the  move- 
ment the  element  of  definiteness.  This,  he  says,  in  effect, 
is  what  is  now  being  done.  Here  are  patterns  and  sug- 
gestions for  those  who  would  bring  their  good  desires  to 
good  effect. 

In  the  year-books  and  sermons  of  this  period,  Dr.  Potter 
continually  recurred  to  the  idea  of  living  the  life  of  religion 
in  the  midst  of  the  distractions  of  society.  In  the  nature 
of  things,  those  who  could  serve  God  as  sisters  or  deacon- 
esses were  few  in  number ;  but  all  were  summoned  to  serve 
Him  in  the  normal  occupations  of  the  common  life.  The 
rector  was  oppressed  and  dismayed  by  a  certain  "deification 
of  amusement"  to  which  his  experience  had  not  accustomed 
him.  He  frankly  liked  society.  His  temperament  directed 
him  that  way.  He  saw  no  virtue  in  a  habit  of  separation 
which  sets  the  minister  apart  from  the  natural  life  of  his 
neighbors,  and  connects  him  only  with  books  and  prayers, 
with  weddings  and  funerals.  There  is  a  legend  in  the 
effect  that  when  his  name  was  brought  forward  in  an  elec- 
tion to  the  bishopric  of  Massachusetts,  it  was  objected  to 
him  that  he  attended  teas.  No  doubt  he  did,  finding 
there  not  only  relaxation  but  opportunity.  This  honest 
enjoyment  of  social  life  emphasized  his  criticisms  of  society. 


80  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

He  was  able  to  speak  in  the  language  of  sympathetic  under- 
standing. 

Recreation,  he  said,  is  tested  by  its  results.  It  is  recrea- 
tion only  when  it  re-creates.  "I  say  nothing  now  of  the 
function  which  an  assemblage,  gathered  at  an  hour  when 
people  are  ordinarily  in  their  beds,  in  overheated,  over- 
crowded rooms,  under  conditions  hopelessly  unfavorable 
to  hearty  or  kindly  intellectual  intercourse,  aiming  simply 
and  supremely  at  physical  and  millinery  display,  may 
answer  in  the  sphere  of  what  is  conventionally  known  as 
'society,'  for  I  confess  frankly  that  the  whole  subject  is 
to  me  a  mystery,  which,  the  more  it  is  scrutinized  only 
grows  the  more  obscure  and  unintelligible ;  but  I  protest 
against  the  calling  of  any  such  an  entertainment  or -of  any 
other  form  of  recreation  with  such  characteristics,  by  the 
name  of  genuine  amusement." 

So  of  the  theatre.  "Persons  of  pure  lives  and  unspotted 
name  are  seen  in  our  day,  gazing  upon  spectacles  or  heark- 
ening to  dialogues,  which,  whether  spoken  or  sung,  ought 
to  bring  the  blush  of  shame  to  any  decent  cheek.  If  we 
could  see  some  parent  rising  in  her  seat  in  a  place  of  public 
amusement  and  calling  those  about  her  to  follow  her  out 
of  it,  when  both  modesty  and  decorum  had  been  outraged 
by  the  mimic  scene  upon  the  stage,  we  should  have  a  speci- 
men of  genuine  heroism  which  would  go  farther  than  any- 
thing else  to  give  us  healthful  and  innocent  dramatic 
representations." 

It  is  easy  to  speak  after  this  fashion  to  a  congregation 
who  are  acquainted  with  balls  and  operas  only  by  reading 
about  them  in  the  newspapers,  and  who  listen  with  the 
instinctive  approval  which  attends  a  reprobation  of  other 
people's  sins  ;  but  these  words,  and  many  others  quite  as 
plain,  were  preached  in  what  was  called  a  "fashionable" 
church  in  the  hearing  of  those  to  whom  these,  matters  pre- 
sentrd  an  actual  and  immediate  temptation. 

Meanwhile,  "the  scheme  of  a  house  for  Christian  work 
among  the  poor  and  neglected,  to  be  planted  in  their  midst, 


81 

and  include  within  its  walls  provision  for  the  instruction 
of  the  young,  for  medical  aid  and  services,  for  free  Mission 
Services,  free  Lectures,  and  other  forms  of  recreation  and 
instruction"  had  been  given  solid  reality.  The  Annual 
Report  for  1872  contains  a  letter  to  the  vestry  from  the 
Hon.  Levi  P.  Morton:  "I  desire  to  present  to  the  Rector, 
Wardens,  and  Vestry  of  Grace  Church,  New  York,  the 
property  at  present  known  as  Calvary  Chapel,  in  East 
Twenty-third  Street,  near  Third  Avenue,  comprising  two 
lots  of  land,  together  50  feet  by  100  feet,  with  the  Chapel, 
organ  and  fixtures,  the  said  premises  or  their  proceeds  to 
be  always  under  the  control  and  direction  of  Grace  Church, 
and  to  be  held  in  trust  by  them  for  the  general  purposes 
described  in  the  paper  herewith  appended  under  the  title 
of  '  Grace  House.'  I  have  been  moved  to  this  act  chiefly 
by  my  desire  to  commemorate  my  late  wife,  Lucy  Kimball 
Morton,  to  whom  the  scheme  of  Grace  House  when  it  was 
first  submitted  to  her  by  her  Pastor,  at  once  became  dear, 
and  who,  before  her  death,  had  expressed  her  intention  of 
cooperating  personally  in  its  realization ;  and  I  am  also 
anxious  to  recognize  by  this  gift  the  obligations  of  men  of 
business,  whom  God  has  blessed  in  their  business  enter- 
prises, to  acknowledge  their  indebtedness  to  Him  by  gifts 
for  the  benefit  of  their  fellow-men." 

Mr.  Morton's  gift  was  afterwards  known  as  the  Memorial 
House,  and  the  name  Grace  House  was  given  to  a  building 
erected  by  Miss  Wolfe. 

A  few  weeks  after  the  Year  Book  of  1872  was  printed, 
during  the  preparations  for  the  festivities  of  Christmas, 
Grace  Chapel  was  destroyed  by  fire,  and  Mr.  Morton's 
gift,  pending  the  erection  of  Grace  House,  came  into  im- 
mediate use. 

Already,  in  1871,  Dr.  Potter  had  been  so  seriously  con- 
sidered for  the  bishopric  of  the  new  diocese  of  Central 
Pennsylvania,  that  Bishop  Stevens  had  written  to  him 
from  Philadelphia  upon  the  matter.  He  had  said  in  sub- 
stance that  if  Dr.  Howe  were  not  elected  on  the  first  ballot, 


82  HEXRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

Dr.  Potter  would  almost  certainly  be  elected  on  the  second. 
Bishop  Stevens  confessed  his  preference  for  Dr.  Howe. 
"Both  of  you/'  he  said,  "are  my  friends.  Both  are  qualified 
for  the  high  position.  To  each  of  you  I  could  cordially 
give  the  right  hand  of  fellowship,  and  to  either  of  you 
entrust,  as  it  were,  my  daughter-diocese  in  the  full  as- 
surance that  you  would  surely  perform  and  keep  the  vow 
and  covenant  betwixt  you.  Notwithstanding  this,  you 
will  not,  I  am  sure,  take  any  offence  when  I  say  that  my 
first  choice  is  Dr.  Howe.  He  has  been  over  a  quarter 
of  a  century  connected  with  this  diocese,  and  with  all  its 
missionary  and  parochial  work.  He  was,  as  you  know, 
the  staunch  friend  of  your  father,  whose  policy  he  fully 
endorsed  and  whose  confidence  he  richly  enjoyed.  He  has 
been  my  most  intimate  friend  and  counsellor,  and  has  fully 
supported  all  my  plans.  What  I  particularly  desire  to 
know  now  is  whether  in  case  you  are  selected  you  will 
accept.  It  has  been  said  again  and  again  that  you  would 
not  leave  Grace  Church  for  such  a  diocese,  and  hence  it 
would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  elect  you.  I  do  not  ask  that 
you  should  pledge  yourself  to  accept  if  elected,  but  I  do 
ask  for  my  private  information,  whether  there  are  any  in- 
superable objections  to  your  accepting,  if  chosen?" 

There  were  no  insuperable  objections,  Dr.  Potter  replied, 
so  far  as  his  parochial  engagements  were  concerned,  but 
there  were  two  invincible  difficulties:  one  was  his  "pro- 
found reluctance  to  be  brought  into  even  seeming  competi- 
tion with  Dr.  Howe"  ;  the  other  was  his  "conscious  unfitness 
for  the  Episcopal  office."  These  difficulties  cooperated 
with  Bishop  Stevens'  preference,  and  Dr.  Howe  was  duly 
elected. 

Bishop  Coxe,  whom  Dr.  Potter  had  consulted,  expressed 
himself  on  the  question  of  duty  involved.  "I  once  took 
the  ground  that  an  intimation  beforehand,  such  as  you  have 
received,  was  a  providential  opportunity  to  forbid.  Had 
an  election  been  thrown  on  you,  without  any  previous 
opportunity  of  this  kind,  the  case  would  be  widely  differ- 


THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  A   WORKING   PARISH         83 

ent.  But  to  have  such  an  opportunity  afforded  and  not 
to  forbid  is  to  commit  one's  self,  it  seems  to  me,  to  any 
result  that  Providence  may  ordain.  The  spirit  of  the 
Scriptures,  and  all  precedent  in  the  history  of  the  Church, 
justifies  a  nolo  episcopari  at  the  previous  stage. 

"Now  as  to  the  wisdom  of  such  action.  I  do  think  that 
before  one  is  40  years  old  (even  45)  he  may  claim  the  right 
to  be  let  alone  in  his  presbyterate  —  provided  he  is  con- 
sulted before  an  election.  The  presbyterate  is  of  divine 
origin  as  well  as  the  episcopate,  and  while  one  has  an  un- 
fulfilled mission  in  this  order,  it  is  presumably  his  duty 
to  'make  full  proof  of  this  ministry." 

The  spring  of  1873  brought  with  it  another  episcopal 
election  into  which  the  name  of  Dr.  Potter  entered.  Early 
in  May,  Mr.  Robert  M.  Mason  of  Boston  wrote  to  his 
friend  Mr.  James  S.  Amory  of  the  same  city  concerning 
possible  candidates.  "The  idea  of  Dr.  Dix  for  this  diocese," 
he  said,  "is  intolerable.  These  men  who  would  like  to 
impose  him  upon  us  do  not  seek  the  good  of  the  Church, 
or  its  peace,  or  the  happiness  of  the  Rev.  gentleman  in 
question,  for  he  would  have  a  harder  time  than  even  the 
late  long-to-be-lamented  incumbent  had.  We  have  had 
two  meetings  at  this  house  —  I  was  sorry  you  could  not 
be  here.  They  were  earnest,  and  full  of  anxiety  on  ac- 
count of  the  general  position  of  things.  Dr.  Vint  on  posi- 
tively refuses  to  be  a  candidate  and  in  such  terms  that 
he  must  be  dropped  entirely  from  consideration.  Yester- 
day, after  much  discussion,  we  unanimously  declared 
Revd.  Henry  C.  Potter  as  our  choice,  and  he  is  now  our 
Candidate.  You  may  be  moved  to  see  him  on  the  subject, 
but  I  think  you  had  better  not.  He  cannot,  of  course, 
say  what  will  be  his  decision,  on  a  chance,  and  I  would  -not 
allow  him  to  say  that  he  will  not  be  a  Candidate.  We  are, 
my  dear  Amory,  —  I  say  with  deep  anxiety  —  in  a  very 
critical  position.  I  fear  the  result  of  the  doings  of  the 
Convention.  A  new  Standing  Committee  was  also  de- 
termined on.  Mr.  Newton,  Mr.  Brooks,  Mr.  Winthrop 


84  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

and  many  others  present.  Dr.  Wharton  is  absent.  Keep 
away  from  Dr.  Potter.  We  must  try  to  elect  him  by  a 
handsome  vote,  and  then  leave  it  to  the  care  of  a  higher 
power." 

Mr.  Amory  did  not  deem  it  wise  to  follow  this  advice. 
He  sent  Mr.  Mason's  letter  to  Dr.  Potter. 

"Many  thanks,"  said  Dr.  Potter,  "for  your  note  and 
its  enclosure,  which  I  herewith  return.  You  do  not  ask 
from  me  any  response,  but  it  seems  to  me  I  am  none  the 
less  bound  in  honor  to  make  one.  When  our  friend,  Mr. 
Winthrop,  was  last  in  my  study,  he  said,  speaking  of  Dr. 
Haight's  declination,  that  the  time  for  a  man  to  say  'Nolo 
cpiscopari'  was  before  his  election,  not  afterwards.  There 
is,  nevertheless,  something  not  quite  modest  in  declining 
honors  before  they  are  offered  to  one,  but  I  must  say  nolo 
cpiscopari,  and  say  it  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart. 

"You  know  how  I  love  my  old  home,  and  how  I  have 
counted  it  no  small  honor  to  have  been  associated  with  the 
church  in  Boston  and  the  Diocese  of  Massachusetts,  even 
in  a  very  inferior  position ;  but  all  the  more  because  I 
know  how  ' weighty  a  charge  and  how  great  a  dignity'  (as 
our  Ordinal  has  it)  are  involved  in  the  office  of  the  Epis- 
copate of  such  a  Diocese,  do  I  shrink  from  it  in  unaffected 
dismay.  I  think  the  last  48  hours  (since  some  one  sent 
me  a  newspaper  paragraph  giving  me  the  first  inkling  of 
this  matter)  have  been  amongst  the  most  wretched  of  my 
life! 

"If  Dr.  Dix  has  withdrawn,  why  not  return  to  Dr.  Vin- 
ton.  I  trust  he  will  reconsider  his  determination  and 
consent  to  stand." 

On  the  same  day,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Amos  A.  Lawrence, 
who  had  been  his  neighbor  in  Longwood,  and  who  had  ad- 
dressed to  him  the  same  information  as  Mr.  Amory.  '  Your 
kindness,"  he  said,  "in  writing,  gives  me  an  opportunity 
to  say  that  I  am  not  a  candidate  for  your  vacant  bishopric 
-  that  the  use  of  my  name  in  connection  with  it  is  wholly 
without  my  knowledge  or  consent  and  that  I  cannot  re- 


THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  A  WORKING   PARISH         85 

gard  myself  as  qualified  for  such  grave  responsibilities  as 
such  a  post  involves. 

"You,  who  know  how  I  and  mine  love  Boston,  even 
though  you  do  not  know  that  the  episcopate  of  Massa- 
chusetts has  always  seemed  to  me  the  most  enviable  posi- 
tion in  our  American  Church,  can  understand  what  it  costs 
me  to  say  this.  But  all  the  more  I  feel  bound  to  say  it, 
though  even  if  I  were  silent  there  would  be,  I  presume, 
only  the1  ^remotest  chance  of  my  election.  I  must  not 
allow  my  name  to  impede  or  embarrass  your  action." 

In  spite  of  this  letter,  Dr.  Potter's  name  was  brought 
before  the  Convention.  The  other  candidate  was  Dr. 
James  DeKoven.  When  it  became  evident  that  neither 
could  be  elected,  a  compromise  was  made  and  the  con- 
tending parties  united  in  the  selection  of  Dr.  Benjamin 
Henry  Paddock. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH 
1873-1878 

DR.  POTTER'S  endeavors  to  bring  his  people  to  a  deeper 
seriousness  and  a  more  fraternal  consideration  of  their 
social  duty  were  emphasized  by  the  panic  of  1873. 

The  northeastern  section  of  the  United  States,  especially 
New  England  and  New  York,  were  feeling  the  effects  of 
recent  dealings  with  the  South  and  West.  The  war  with 
the  South  had  been  enormously  expensive,  and  it  had  been 
followed  by  speculative  adventures  in  the  West  which 
were  almost  as  costly.  The  opening  of  new  lands,  the 
extending  of  new  railways  and  the  developing  of  new  in- 
dustries had  brought  the  country  into  debt. 

In  September,  1873,  the  financial  storm  broke  upon 
the  nation.  Jay  Cooke,  financier  of  the  Northern  Pacific 
railway,  failed,  and  general  ruin  followed.  The  building 
of  railways  suddenly  ceased  and  a  number  of  those  already 
built  went  into  the  hands  of  receivers.  The  iron  mills  shut 
their  doors.  "Hard  times"  closed  in  upon  the  people. 

These  conditions  increased  the  difficulties  of  Dr.  Potter's 
work,  but  they  served  also  to  emphasize  his  interest  in  the 
problem  of  the  poor  and  to  lead  him  to  study  it  more  care- 
fully. 

"The  widespread  and  exceptional  destitution  of  the 
Winter  of  1873-1874,"  he  said  in  his  Sixth  Annual  Account 
of  the  Parish  Work,  "has  started  many  questions  which 
the  continued  stagnation  of  the  present  winter  makes 
pressing  and  important  ones.  There  has  been  a  very 
general  and  timely  discussion  of  the  whole  matter  of  aiding 

8G 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       87 

and  relieving  the  poor,  and  a  growing  feeling  that  many 
of  the  methods  heretofore  employed  have  been  of  doubtful 
expediency.  The  anticipated  hardships  of  the  unemployed 
poor  of  last  winter,  and  the  well-meant  but  not  always  wise 
means  set  on  foot  to  relieve  them,  have  eventuated  in  con- 
sequences which  have  been  in  many  instances  discouraging, 
if  not  positively  alarming.  It  has  been  found  that  promis- 
cuous gifts  of  free  food  and  lodging  made  New  York  the 
winter  rendezvous  of  the  idle  and  vagrant  classes  from 
almost  all  parts  of  the  country ;  and  that  kindly  bene- 
factions were,  in  many  instances,  a  liberal  premium  paid 
for  the  privilege  of  supporting  the  paupers  of  other  com- 
munities. This  was  the  fruit  of  a  charity  regulated  by 
sentimentality  rather  than  by  judgment,  and  no  sooner 
have  its  consequences  become  apparent  than  there  seems 
danger  of  a  reaction,  first  into  something  like  hostility 
toward  a  class  which  has  imposed  upon  us,  and  then  of 
indifference  toward  the  poor  generally. 

"One  or  two  considerations,  therefore,  need  to  be  borne 
in  mind,  whether  we  deal  with  the  poor  directly  or  through 
the  agency  of  others ;  and  I  venture  to  state  them  here, 
because  they  are  those  under  the  governance  of  which  it 
has  been  my  desire  and  endeavor  that  the  work  of  our 
Parish  Societies  should  be  carried  on. 

"1.  It  should  be  remembered,  in  the  first  place,  that 
no  rule  for  helping  poor  people,  any  more  than  any  other 
people,  can  be  a  sweeping  one  of  universal  application. 
There  is  one  formula,  which  some  persons  are  fond  of 
appealing  to,  which  limits  their  charity  to  the  '  deserving 
poor.'  The  deserving  poor  are  almost  as  hard  to  find  as 
the  deserving  rich,  and  either  class  is  equally  mythical. 
Had  it  been  applied  by  the  Divine  Friend  who  supremely 
helps  us  all,  the  infinite  pity  and  succor  of  Calvary  would 
not  have  been  vouchsafed  to  anybody.  Of  course,  there 
are  as  a  matter  of  fact  many  persons  who  are  sick  or  needy 
or  embarrassed  through  no  fault  of  their  own.  But  there 
are  many  others  who  have  been  improvident,  or  deceived, 


88  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

or  erring  —  many  who  have  been  betrayed  by  false  friends 
or  their  own  appetites,  whom  we  cannot  straightway  turn 
our  backs  upon  because  they  are  not  deserving.  We  may 
rightly  recognize  the  first  claim  of  the  frugal  and  industrious, 
but  there  are  others  who  have  a  claim  upon  us  besides. 

"2.  But  having  said  this,  it  needs  to  be  remembered 
that  among  these  others  are  not  those  who  are  chronic 
idlers  and  often  hereditary  paupers  —  the  children,  as 
Dr.  Elisha  Harris  has  so  strikingly  shown  in  his  Examina- 
tion of  the  Poor  Houses  of  this  State,  of  those  who  were 
professional  paupers  before  them.  This  class  demands  a 
treatment,  partly  reformatory  and  partly  punitive,  of  its 
own ;  but  it  does  not  demand  and  is  not  entitled  to  the 
indiscriminate  benefactions  which  in  the  streets  and  at 
our  doors  its  persistent  and  brazen  solicitations  too  often 
secure  for  it.  When  we  give  a  dole  in  the  street  mainly 
to  get  rid  of  importunity,  we  must  remember  that  we  are 
helping  to  multiply,  not  to  get  rid  of,  the  pauper  class. 
Nay,  more,  we  must  remember  that  we  are  taking  from 
those  who  need  our  help  to  give  to  those  who  do  not  need. 
We  cannot,  indeed,  say  hastily  to  unemployed  men  or 
women  who  ask  our  alms,  'Go  and  find  work,  east  or  west, 
and  support  yourselves,'  but  we  can  remember  that  work 
is  to  be  had  for  both  men  and  women,  and  that  there  are 
a  great  many  instances  in  which  we  are  doing  a  far  truer 
and  more  Christian  charity  to  help  people  to  find  it. 

"For  when  all  are  maintaining  themselves  who  can, 
and  when  the  idle  and  the  vicious  are  no  longer  draining 
the  resources  of  our  charitable  associations,  there  still  re- 
mains a  very  numerous  class  who  have  the  clearest  claim 
upon  our  sympathy  and  help.  The  sick,  the  crippled, 
the  blind  or  imbecile,  or  otherwise  incapacitated ;  poor 
women  and  untaught  childhood ;  children  and  young  girls 
left  orphaned  or  alone  in  this  great  city ;  persons  of  gentle 
nurture  and  antecedents  who  have  met  with  reverses; 
all  these  at  our  doors,  and  then  the  family  of  the  stranger 
and  the  missionary  beyond  them,  alike  have  a  claim.  Do 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       89 

what  we  can,  we  can  scarcely  hope  to  meet  these  claims 
upon  us ;  and  until  we  do,  the  claims  of  those  whose  wants 
are  the  result  of  their  own  indolent  choice  ought  resolutely 
to  be  disallowed. 

"But  in  disallowing  them  let  us  remember  that  there  is 
something  worse  than  even  the  sentimentalism  of  indis- 
criminate and  thoughtless  charity.  And  that  is  the  cyni- 
cism and  indifference  which  sneers  at  all  charity  alike  — 
that  cynicism  in  which  'fraud'  and  'humbug'  and  'im- 
posture' are  the  cheap  and  easy  terms  with  which  it  vents 
its  insensibility  and  coarsely  attempts  to  excuse  its  own 
selfish  meanness.  Better  the  most  'gushing'  improvidence 
of  charity  than  that  temper,  into  which,  nevertheless, 
familiarity  with  the  miseries  of  a  vast  community  and  the 
mistakes  of  those  who  are  striving  to  alleviate  those  miseries 
may  easily  betray  us.  Let  us  scrutinize  and  reform  our 
methods,  but  let  us  take  care  how,  in  doing  it,  we  extinguish 
our  Christian  sympathies." 

These  counsels  and  admonitions,  antedating  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Charity  Organization  Society,  and  addressed 
to  a  community  as  yet  meagrely  instructed  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  effective  dealing  with  the  problem  of  the  poor, 
bear  witness  to  the  combination  of  sense  with  sympathy 
whereby  the  rector  of  Grace  Church  met  the  perplexities 
of  those  difficult  years.  They  reveal  also  his  characteristic 
equipoise.  He  was  not  overborne  by  a  perception  on  the 
one  side  of  the  miseries  of  the  poor,  or  by  a  perception 
on  the  other  side  of  the  indifference  of  the  rich.  Seeing 
clearly  the  perils  of  undiscriminating  benefaction,  he  saw 
also,  with  equal  clearness,  the  perils  of  a  charity  so  careful 
that  it  could  be  described  as  dispensing  "the  milk  of  human 
kindness  —  sterilized."  The  advice  is  charged  with  an 
abiding  wisdom  whereby  it  stands  true  to  this  day,  through 
all  improvement  of  charitable  method,  and  might  be  re- 
printed, with  scarcely  the  change  of  a  word,  by  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  in  its  next  annual  report. 

The  significance  of  this  practical  interest  is  emphasized 


90  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

by  its  quiet  remoteness  from  the  ecclesiastical  perturba- 
tions of  the  time.  The  mind  of  the  church  was  engaged 
upon  quite  different  matters.  In  October,  1873,  Dr.  Payne 
Smith,  Dean  of  Canterbury,  came  to  New  York  as  a  dele- 
gate to  the  World's  Conference  of  the  Evangelical  Alliance. 
He  brought  to  that  assembly  a  letter  of  sympathy  from  the 
Archbishop.  In  the  pursuance  of  his  fraternal  mission 
he  participated  one  Sunday  morning  in  the  Madison  Avenue 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  administration  of  the  Holy 
Communion,  together  with  other  ministers,  most  of  whom 
lacked  episcopal  ordination.  By  a  curious  coincidence, 
highly  interesting  in  the  light  of  the  protest  made  in  1913 
against  a  similar  fraternization  in  Kikuyu,  it  was  an  in- 
valided bishop  of  Zanzibar  who  brought  the  matter  to 
the  official  attention  of  the  Bishop  of  New  York !  Bishop 
Tozer,  being  in  the  city,  addressed  a  letter  on  the  subject 
to  Bishop  Horatio  Potter,  regretting  that  the  Dean  of 
Canterbury  had  so  far  forgotten  his  dignity  and  duty  as 
"to  officiate  with  ministers  of  various  denominations  in  a 
communion  service  which  differed  materially  from  that 
of  the  English  and  American  Prayer  Books." 

Thereupon  Dr.  Cummins,  Assistant  Bishop  of  Kentucky, 
announced  that  he  himself  had  done  a  like  thing  at  a  similar 
service  in  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church.  And 
when  Bishop  Potter,  in  November,  published  a  letter  in 
which  he  sustained  and  commended  the  Bishop  of  Zanzibar, 
Bishop  Cummins  resigned  his  office,  and  the  Reformed 
Episcopal  Church  came  presently  into  being. 

Not  only  did  Henry  Potter  refrain  from  any  public  inter- 
mingling with  this  contention,  but  he  took  no  part  in  the 
organization,  in  1874,  of  the  Church  Congress.  The  idea 
of  such  an  undertaking  was  brought  back  from  England 
by  Dr.  Harwood  of  New  Haven,  who  had  attended  a  session 
of  such  a  Congress  there.  It  found  favor  with  Dr.  John 
Cotton  Smith  in  New  York,  and  with  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks 
in  Boston.  It  did  not,  however,  find  favor  with  Bishop 
Horatio  Potter.  He  not  only  declined  to  preside  over 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       91 

such  an  assembly  at  its  first  meeting,  held  in  New  York 
in  October,  1874,  but  he  issued  a  Pastoral  Letter  against  it. 

Several  years  before  (March  6,  1872)  the  Bishop  had 
written  to  the  rector  of  Grace  regarding  some  such  con- 
ference. "I  am  by  no  means  sure,"  he  said,  "as  to  the 
use  or  safety  of  any  general  meetings  of  the  clergy  and 
laity  for  general  debates  on  matters  and  things  in  general. 
A  great  deal  of  imprudent  talk  would  be  indulged  in,  and 
foolish  things  would  be  proposed,  and  then,  if  the  bishops 
did  not  concur,  it  would  be  a  new  grievance.  ...  In 
the  conferences  which  the  bishops  have  started  in  Eng- 
land, they  retain  absolute  control  of  the  topics  to  be  intro- 
duced and  of  the  measures  they  will  sanction.  It  is  their 
only  safe  way.  But  I  could  not  probably  do  it  here."  In 
a  postscript  he  added:  "I  believe  that  you,  in  a  quiet 
way,  could  do  much  to  discourage  the  conference,  but  it 
is  not  one  of  the  things  which  I  care  to  ask." 

The  Bishop  was  of  the  same  opinion  still.  The  General 
Convention,  he  said,  is  the  proper  place  for  discussion. 
The  men  who  are  in  charge  of  this  matter,  he  added,  are 
"a  crowd  of  excited  and  declamatory  spirits."  He  pre- 
dicted that  the  movement  would  be  "repudiated  by  a 
large  portion  of  our  conservative  and  candid  churchmen." 
He  said  that  this  was  also  the  position  of  many  of  his  epis- 
copal brethren  with  whom  he  had  communicated. 

"Is  it  so?"  replied  Dr.  Washburn  in  an  answering  pam- 
phlet. "Is  it  so  indeed?  What  shall  the  church  do  if 
her  chief  pastors  take  upon  themselves  this  authority?" 

What  the  church  actually  did,  so  far  as  it  was  repre- 
sented by  the  promoters  of  the  Congress,  was  to  go  quietly 
ahead  and  hold  it.  Dr.  Vinton  presided.  Bishop  Whipple, 
speaking  at  the  Holy  Communion  with  which  the  sessions 
began,  reminded  the  brethren  that  "one  word  of  love  and 
sympathy  was  worth  a  thousand  witty  ones."  The  speakers 
discussed  "The  Limits  of  Legislation  as  to  Doctrine  and 
Ritual,"  "Clerical  Education,"  and  "The  Relation  of  this 
Church  to  Other  Religious  Bodies."  The  spirit  of  the 


92  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

debates  disarmed  suspicion.  The  fact  that  by  the  rules 
of  the  Congress  no  resolutions  were  adopted  and  no  ques- 
tions put  to  vote,  and  that  nobody  was  responsible  for  the 
opinions  of  his  neighbor,  made  it  a  place  where  men  of 
very  different  temperaments  and  traditions  could  meet 
for  frank  discourse.  The  effect  of  it  was  to  relieve  a  tense 
and  perilous  situation. 

The  absence  of  Henry  Potter  from  public  appearance  in 
these  current  controversies  is  capable  of  different  inter- 
pretations. It  may  have  been  occasioned  by  considera- 
tions of  prudent  policy,  disinclining  him  to  commit  himself 
to  radical  propositions,  low-church  or  broad-church.  It  may 
have  been  governed  by  a  sense  of  loyalty  to  his  ecclesiastical 
chief,  who  was  not  only  his  bishop  but  his  uncle.  It  is  likely, 
however,  that  one  of  the  determining  motives  was  a  distrust 
of  the  importance  of  the  things  at  stake  as  compared  with  the 
plain  importance  of  the  practical  work  in  which  he  was  un- 
ceasingly employed.  His  mind  was  administrative  rather 
than  inventive.  He  had  his  father's  dislike  of  turmoil 
and  debate.  He  was  a  low-churchman  in  his  feeling  about 
ritual,  and  a  broad-churchman  in  his  sympathy  with  free- 
dom of  thought  and  speech,  but  he  was  never,  in  either 
direction,  a  radical.  His  gift  of  leadership  was  neither 
ecclesiastical  nor  doctrinal,  but  social  and  practical. 

This  is  the  temperament  which  makes  good  bishops. 
So  they  believed,  about  that  time,  in  Iowa.  The  Con- 
vention of  that  diocese,  meeting  in  Davenport  on  December 
9th,  1874,  having  before  them  two  names,  that  of  Dr. 
Huntington  of  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  and  that  of  Dr. 
Potter,  chose  Dr.  Potter  on  the  second  ballot.  He  tele- 
graphed, however,  the  next  day,  that  he  could  not  possibly 
accept,  being  bound  to  New  York  by  parochial  duties  which 
he  could  not  leave.  "His  congregation,"  said  one  of  the 
New  York  newspapers,  "are  rejoiced  to  hear  it,  and  the 
news  also  delights  the  large  circle  of  the  Doctor's  friends 
outside  his  flock."  And  the  editorial  ventured  a  sugges- 
tion looking  to  the  future:  "Should  there  be  a  vacancy  in 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       93 

the  course  of  nature,  in  the  position  now  filled  by  his  uncle, 
Bishop  Potter  of  this  city,  there  is  no  man  more  likely  to 
be  called  to  that  exalted  place." 

Meanwhile,  the  parochial  endeavors  to  help  the  poor 
proceeded  with  an  activity  increased  to  meet  the  increased 
need,  and  in  spite  of  serious  handicaps.  The  financial  em- 
barrassments of  the  time  affected  all  classes,  the  rich  as 
well  as  the  poor,  and  held  back  or  diminished  the  con- 
tributions of  many  generous  supporters  of  the  parish  work. 
Grace  House  had  not  yet  been  erected ;  and  Grace  Chapel 
was  still  in  ashes. 

In  1875  Dr.  Potter  informed  the  congregation  that  it 
had  been  ascertained  that  "the  ground  and  buildings  in 
the  rear  of  the  old  site  of  the  Chapel  could  be  purchased, 
and  that  the  parish  could  thus  secure  sufficient  space  for 
the  groups  of  buildings  which,  in  accordance  with  the  plan 
submitted  in  our  annual  report  some  three  or  four  years 
ago,  it  was  proposed  to  erect."  This  purchase  was  accord- 
ingly made,  and  building  operations  were  at  once  begun. 

"The  generosity  of  a  single  individual,"  says  the  rector, 
"enabled  us  to  secure  a  Parsonage  House  for  the  minister 
in  charge,  and  the  vestry  proceeded  to  consummate  the 
purchase  of  houses  and  lots  in  East  Thirteenth  Street, 
which,  taken  in  connection  with  the  site  of  the  former 
Chapel,  gave  us  an  area  of  210  feet  in  depth  and  of  62-rr 
feet  in  width,  with  two  advantageous  fronts  :  one  on  Four- 
teenth Street,  and  the  other  on  Thirteenth  Street.  Plans 
were  at  once  secured  for  a  Sunday  School  Building  having 
a  frontage  on  Fourteenth  Street,  and  for  a  Chapel  Build- 
ing to  be  erected  in  connection  with  it  and  to  occupy  the 
centre  of  the  lot." 

"When  these  buildings  are  finished  three-fourths  of  our 
original  plan,  i.e.  Grace  Chapel,  Grace  Hall,  and  Grace 
Parsonage,  will  be  a  realized  fact ;  and  as  the  means  for 
the  remaining  fourth  part  (to  be  known  as  Grace  House) 
are  already  provided,  we  may  hope,  ere  long,  to  see  the 
whole  a  solid  and  completed  fact." 


94  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

The  first  Grace  Chapel,  erected  during  Dr.  Taylor's 
rectorship,  stood  on  the  corner  of  Madison  Avenue  and 
Twenty-third  Street.  In  1856,  the  congregation  worship- 
ping therein  organized  itself  into  an  independent  parish, 
under  the  name  of  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation.  A 
second  Grace  Chapel  was  therefore  built  in  Fourteenth 
Street,  but  at  a  time  when  worship  rather  than  work  was 
the  ideal  of  parish  life.  When  Dr.  Potter  came  with  his 
spirit  of  social  service,  and  imparted  his  enthusiasm  to 
his  congregation,  and  set  them  to  work  for  the  common 
welfare,  "it  was  found,"  as  he  said  afterwards,  "that  the 
building,  though  cost  and  pains  had  not  been  spared  in 
rearing  it,  was  but  ill-adapted  for  the  uses  of  free-church, 
or,  indeed,  of  any  church  work,  and  was  wholly  wanting 
in  those  manifold  conveniences  which  the  growth  of  church 
life  among  us  had  made  indispensable  to  the  manifold 
forms  of  parochial  activity. 

"In  the  construction  of  the  building  everything  had 
been  sacrificed  to  a  large  auditorium.  There  were  no 
conveniences  for  parochial  or  other  societies,  and  even  the 
accommodations  of  the  Sunday  School,  which  were  pro- 
vided in  the  recesses  of  a  damp  and  dark  basement,  were 
such  as  to  discourage  those  most  interested  in  its  pros- 
perity. The  young  men  and  wTomen  of  the  parent  church 
who  offered  their  services  as  teachers  found  that  their 
catechetical  functions  had  to  be  exercised  amid  surround- 
ings that  recalled  the  catacombs,  and  in  an  atmosphere 
which  seemed  likely,  to  sensitive  constitution,  to  threaten 
the  reenacting  of  the  primitive  martyrdoms.  In  a  word, 
beyond  the  not  altogether  convenient  arrangements  of 
the  main  assemblage-room  itself,  much  about  the  build- 
ing was  calculated  rather  to  hinder  than  to  foster  growth 
and  prosperity." 

The  fire,  accordingly,  while  it  was  for  the  moment  a 
calamity,  was  a  disguised  blessing.  The  work  of  the  parish 
societies  was  temporarily  disordered;  certain  "vexatious 
litigation"  hindered  the  vestry  from  securing  a  site  upon 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       95 

which  both  Grace  Chapel  and  Grace  House  might  be  erected. 
In  the  meantime,  the  Chapel  in  East  Twenty-third  Street, 
given  by  Mr.  Morton,  served  as  a  meeting-place  for  the 
societies. 

During  the  winter  of  1875-1876,  while  the  vestry  were 
clearing  away  the  legal  obstacles  and  making  arrange- 
ments for  the  erection  of  the  new  building,  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
Potter,  in  the  hospitable  company  of  Miss  Catherine  Loril- 
lard  Wolfe,  made  a  journey  to  the  East.  The  impressions 
of  this  journey  were  pleasantly  recorded  in  a  little  book 
which  Dr.  Potter  published  in  1877,  under  the  title,  "The 
Gates  of  the  East :  a  Winter  in  Egypt  and  Syria." 

The  chapters  are  in  the  manner,  though  not  in  the  form, 
of  "letters  home."  They  are  in  no  debt  to  guide-books, 
and  contain  no  discussions  of  archeology  and  no  elaborate 
descriptions.  They  are  occupied,  for  the  most  part,  with 
accounts  of  personal  experience.  Thus  they  have  some 
measure  of  the  revealing  quality  of  familiar  correspondence. 

It  is  significant,  for  instance,  that  nothing  in  Alexandria 
interested  him  so  much  as  the  Kaiserwerth  Hospital  and 
its  administration  by  deaconesses.  He  remembered,  in- 
deed, the  greatness  of  Alexandria,  and  thought  of  Kingsley's 
"Hypatia,"  and  looked  at  Pompey's  Pillar;  an  Arab 
runner  reminded  him  of  Elijah  running  before  the  chariot 
of  Ahab,  and  a  youth  examining  a  brass  lamp  in  a  shop 
recalled  the  story  of  Aladdin ;  but  the  patients  in  the  hos- 
pital, and  the  "incomparable  beauty  and  benignity"  of 
the  service  of  their  attendants  found  him  enthusiastic. 
"The  simple,  robust,  practical  way  in  which  deaconesses 
went  about  their  work  was  a  positive  refreshment  to  be- 
hold." It  is  plain  between  the  lines  that  he  is  considering 
how  he  can  improve  American  deaconesses  according  to 
this  pattern. 

He  watched  the  Dancing  Dervishes  rather  sadly,  and 
found  their  exercises  a  dismal  "misdirection  of  spiritual 
aspirations."  But  he  admired  the  attentiveness  of  the 
worshippers  in  the  Mosque  of  Mohammed  Ali,  who  paid 


96  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

no  need  to  the  entrance  of  strangers ;  he  was  impressed 
by  the  expression  of  their  faces,  earnest  and  intent,  as  if 
they  were  actively  seeing  the  invisible.  He  was  much 
amused,  in  the  College  of  Cairo,  by  "two  young  gentle- 
men who,  having  reached  a  point  of  difference  as  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  Koran,  were  engaged,  with  consider- 
able vigor  both  of  speech  and  action,  in  beating  their  ideas 
into  each  other's  heads.  Having  continued  this  process 
for  some  time,  and  being  apparently  as  far  from  a  harmo- 
nious conclusion  of  their  dispute  as  when  they  began,  sud- 
denly, without  a  moment's  warning,  each  spat  in  the  other's 
face,  and  then  they  both  straightway  sat  down  in  the  most 
amicable  fashion,  as  if  the  exchange  of  insults  had  somehow 
cleared  the  air  and  brought  them  to  a  state  of  cordial  and 
complete  theological  agreement." 

One  day,  in  company  with  an  English  missionary,  he 
attended  a  Coptic  wedding.  Several  Coptic  priests  were 
present,  and  in  the  interval  before  the  ceremony  Dr.  Pot- 
ter's friend  endeavored  to  explain  to  these  ecclesiastics 
what  distinguished  guests  they  had  the  good  fortune  to 
be  entertaining.  "Tell  them,  Hassan,"  said  he  to  the 
interpreter,  "that  we  have  bishops,  too."  This  being 
duly  communicated,  "the  three  priests  bowed  their  heads 
and  murmured  something  in  unison.  'What  do  they  say, 
Hassan?'  impatiently  demanded  my  companion.  'They 
say/  said  Hassan,  'It  is  well:  God  be  praised.'  Where- 
upon my  friend,  eager  to  deepen  the  favorable  impression 
which  he  concluded  he  had  made,  went  on:  'Tell  them, 
Hassan,  that  my  companion  is  the  son  of  a  bishop.'  This, 
also,  was  duly  translated  into  Arabic  by  our  facile  atten- 
dants. Whereupon,  much  to  my  friend's  surprise,  the 
countenances  of  the  three  priests  immediately  fell,  and 
for  a  few  moments  wore  an  expression  in  which  grave  dis- 
approbation was  evidently  struggling  with  courtesy."  It 
took  a  long  process  of  explanation  to  make  the  Copts 
understand  the  domestic  differences  between  the  episcopal 
households  of  the  East  and  those  of  the  West. 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       97 

It  distressed  him  much  to  find  Egyptian  children  so 
dirty,  and  the  distress  was  not  mitigated  by  learning  that 
the  dirt  was  due  not  only  to  negligence  but  to  superstition. 
The  "evil  eye/'  they  said;  is  drawn  towards  that  which  is 
attractive ;  the  ragged  and  dirty  child  may  escape  it. 
It  was  a  grief  to  him  to  find  men  working  without  smiling. 
In  the  sugar  factory  at  Rhoda,  "we  met  scores  of  men 
and  hundreds  of  boys,  but  I  never  caught  a  smile  upon 
the  face  of  any  one  of  them."  Egypt  was  under  the  rule 
of  the  Khedive  Ismail.  Railways  had  been  built,  the 
customs  system  had  been  reorganized,  the  post  office  es- 
tablished, light-houses  constructed,  schools  opened ;  in 
1869  the  Suez  Canal  was  completed.  But  the  enormous 
expense  of  these  changes  came  as  an  intolerable  burden 
on  the  taxpayer.  Everything  was  taxed.  "When,  in 
order  to  satisfy  royal  extravagance  at  home  and  bond- 
holding  creditors  abroad,  every  infant  is  taxed  to  an  amount 
equal  to  one  third  of  a  soldier's  wage  for  a  month  the  in- 
stant the  infant  is  born,  and  then,  to  discourage  the  crime 
of  infanticide  which  such  a  system  of  taxation  inevitably 
provoked,  every  infant  that  dies,  no  matter  how  soon 
after  its  birth,  is  taxed  through  its  parents  an  amount 
equal  to  half  a  month's  wages  of  an  ordinary  soldier,  the 
dreadful  and  desperate  wickedness  of  the  situation  may 
be  appreciated."  In  spite  of  this  taxation,  the  nation 
was  bankrupt,  and  the  English  and  the  French,  for  the 
protection  of  the  bondholders,  were  establishing  the  Dual 
Control.  It  seemed  to  Dr.  Potter  that  the  supreme  need 
was  for  religion.  "The  Christian  nations  of  the  North 
and  West  must  furnish  Egypt,  if  they  would  save  it  from 
something  more  utter  and  remediless  than  financial  ruin, 
.with  other  capital  than  machinery,  or  military  training, 
or  money.  Its  prince  and  its  pashas  want  a  wholesome 
substratum  of  sound  moral  ideas." 

The  travelers  began  the  Syrian  part  of  their  journey 
by  landing  at  Jaffa,  where  they  entered  at  once  into  that 
process  of  disillusionment  which  awaits  the  reflective 


98  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

pilgrim.  The  Holy  Land,  indeed,  remained  as  in  the  old 
time,  but  the  holy  places  had  either  been  destroyed  in 
the  countless  wars  of  the  intervening  centuries,  or  buried 
out  of  sight  beneath  accumulated  superstitions.  The 
house  of  Simon  the  Tanner,  the  scene  of  Peter's  vision,  the 
rooms  of  the  industrious  Dorcas  who  made  garments  for 
the  poor,  were  visited  by  credulous  tourists,  but  Dr.  Potter 
could  not  forget  that  "Bertrand  dc  la  Broquiere,  who 
visited  Jaffa  in  the  fifteenth  century,  has  recorded  that 
he  found  the  city  so  utterly  razed  that  no  solitary  wall  or 
roof  was  left,  and  that  his  only  shelter  from  the  burning 
sun  was  a  rude  reed  hut."  Nevertheless,  "as  you  ride  on, 
just  beyond  yonder  ridge,  lies  Philistia,  and  embowered  in 
trees  to  your  left,  gleam  the  white  roofs  of  that  Lydda 
where  once  Peter  tarried  among  the  Christian  converts  of 
the  village,  and  where  he  healed  the  bed-ridden  yEneas. 
And  wrhen  one  lifts  his  eyes,  there,  just  before  him  as  it 
seems,  rise  those  Judean  hills  that  hide  Jerusalem  from 
his  sight,  standing  upon  the  slopes  of  which  Joshua  looked 
down  upon  the  fierce  fight  which  his  countrymen  were 
making  with  the  Amorites  in  the  memorable  valley  at  his 
feet,  and  from  whence,  watching  the  changing  fortunes 
of  the  day,  he  cried,  'Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon ; 
and  thou,  Moon,  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon!'  Amid  such 
scenes  what  does  it  matter  that  the  foot  of  the  Moslem 
profanes  the  sacred  soil?" 

He  found  that  it  mattered  much.  The  Moslem,  the 
Jew  and  the  Christian,  commonplace,  impudent  and  dirty, 
carne  in  between  the  devout  pilgrim  and  every  sacred 
scene.  "How  shall  I  express  the  sense  of  shame,  the 
utter  loathing  at  the  spectacle  of  bitter  incongruity  which 
now  salutes  the  pilgrim  at  the  tomb  of  Christ,  with  which 
one  who  comes  there  for  the  first  time  must,  it  seems  to 
me,  be  filled?"  Preaching  a  few  weeks  later  at  the  con- 
secration of  the  American  Church  in  Rome,  he  expressed 
again  his  feeling  of  deep  disappointment.  "Is  there  any 
sadder  spectacle  than  that  ancient  city,  once  the  home 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH       99 

of  the  Master  and  His  disciples,  hallowed  as  the  scene 
of  His  mighty  works  and  His  mightier  death,  given  up 
to-day  to  the  religion  of  the  Moslem  and  the  dominion 
of  the  Turk  ?  Yes,  there  is  a  sadder  sight  even  than  this ; 
and  it  is  the  sight  of  those  contending  Christian  sects  whom 
a  sneering  Mohammedan  holds  back  ofttimes,  with  force 
of  arms,  from  tearing  each  other  in  pieces,  and  whose 
shameless  rivalries  and  dissensions  profane  alike  the  sepulchre 
and  the  birthplace  of  their  common  Lord."  He  recalled 
how,  in  the  seventh  century,  "when  Sophronius,  the 
Patriarch  of  Jerusalem,  surrendered  the  holy  city  to  the 
Moslem  Caliph,  he  found  only  an  old  man  seated  on  the 
ground  eating  dried  dates  and  drinking  only  water,  —  a 
man  having  but  one  single  ambition,  and  that  to  win  con- 
verts to  the  faith  of  Mohammed." 

The  contrast  seemed  to  him  a  pertinent  lesson  in  the 
presence  of  the  history  of  Christian  Rome.  "We  who 
have  reared  this  holy  house  to  God's  honor,"  he  said  at 
the  consecration  of  St.  Paul's,  "and  consecrated  it  under 
the  name  of  His  latest  called  but  noblest  apostle,  let  us 
not  forget  that  its  presence  in  these  streets  is  an  imperti- 
nence, and  its  costliest  adornments  an  empty  mockery, 
unless  here  there  is  manifested  a  single  and  supreme  desire 
to  bear  a  ceaseless  testimony  to  the  name  and  work  of 
Christ.  Not  to  gratify  any  merely  national  pride,  not 
to  achieve  any  merely  sectarian  triumph,  not  to  secure 
a  safe  retreat  from  within  which  to  hurl  either  taunt  or 
defiance  at  Christians  of  other  whatsoever  name,  but 
simply  to  witness  for  their  Lord,  have  they  who  have 
toiled  and  they  who  have  given  up  builded  these  hallowed 
walls." 

In  spite  of  all  disappointment,  however,  Dr.  Potter 
found  his  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land  a  profitable  and 
even  precious  experience.  Discussing  in  the  last  pages 
of  his  book  the  question  whether  such  a  journey  is  worth 
while,  he  advised  all  travellers,  and  especially  clergymen, 
to  take  it.  "I  find  that  everything  in  Palestine  that  at 


100  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

all  shocked  me,  or  jarred  upon  my  sense  of  reverence,  has, 
somehow,  faded  out  of  my  memory,  while  Olivet  and 
Bethany  and  the  hillsides  of  Bethlehem  are  to-day  a  living 
vision  of  luminous  and  beautiful  reality.  A  few  Sundays 
ago  it  was  my  lot  in  the  order  of  morning  service  to  read 
the  Second  Lesson  of  the  day,  with  its  history  of  St.  Peter's 
vision  at  Joppa,  and  of  his  visit  to  Cornelius  the  Centurion 
at  Csesarea,  and  as  I  did  so,  the  whole  coast  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean lived  in  my  mind's  eye  as  it  must  needs  in  that 
unchanging  land  have  been  present  to  the  eye  of  the  Apostle 
himself." 

In  the  new  strength  of  this  fruitful  experience,  Dr.  Potter 
resumed  his  duties.  On  September  25,  1876,  the  new 
Grace  Chapel  was  consecrated.  The  rector  preached  the 
sermon. 

"As  we  have  placed  the  font,"  he  said,  "at  the  threshold 
of  this  Chapel,  in  token  that  baptism  is  the  door  and  gate- 
way into  the  fellowship  of  the  Church  of  God,  so  have  we 
placed  Grace  Hall,  the  building  through  which  we  have 
passed  on  our  way  hither,  at  the  threshold  of  Grace  Chapel, 
in  token  that  the  Church's  godly  training  and  nurture  is 
the  threshold  of  those  sacraments  and  ordinances  which 
she  offers  for  the  strengthening  and  refreshing  of  more 
adult  life.  We  have  felt  that  this  work  of  teaching  and 
training  was  not  to  be  thrust  under  the  ground,  nor  done  in 
a  corner.  We  have  felt  that  amid  all  the  competitions  of 
that  secular  education  which  is  going  on  about  us,  it  de- 
manded the  best  appliances  and  the  most  generous  pro- 
vision of  every  suitable,  tasteful  and  approved  help.  We 
have  felt,  too,  that  those  who  were  willing  to  labor,  to 
plan,  and  to  contrive  for  the  bettering  of  poor  children, 
for  the  relief  of  the  sick,  for  the  succor  of  the  neglected  and 
destitute,  —  to  do,  in  a  word,  the  work  which  has  been 
done  for  the  past  eight  years  by  the  various  societies  con- 
nected with  this  parish  —  were  entitled  to  every  conven- 
ience and  accommodation  which  their  blessed  work  de- 
manded. And  feeling  this,  we  have  aimed,  in  the  building 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH     101 

which  immediately  adjoins  this,  to  provide  such  appliances 
and  conveniences,  according  to  the  best  models,  and  in 
ample  and  generous  measure. 

"And  so,  too,  in  this  Chapel  itself.  It  has  been  felt 
by  those  who  have  reared  it  that  a  free  church  ought  to 
be  no  less  costly  and  spacious,  or  richly  adorned,  than 
if  it  were  designed  for  the  use  of  those  who  through  an 
ownership  of  the  sittings  are  supposed  to  acquire  a  certain 
right  of  property  in  the  house  of  God.  It  would  have  been 
easy,  when  the  former  edifice  was  destroyed  by  fire,  to 
have  parted  with  its  site  at  a  very  considerable  advance 
upon  the  original  cost,  and  to  have  erected,  in  a  less  ex- 
pensive neighborhood,  a  much  cheaper  structure.  But 
it  was  felt  that  this  would  be  an  economy  too  dearly  pur- 
chased ;  and  instead,  therefore,  of  any  diminution  of  out- 
lay, there  has  been  a  considerable  increase.  Additional 
land  has  been  acquired,  the  services  of  skilled  architects 
and  superior  mechanics  have  been  secured,  and  the  whole 
work,  which  has  involved  an  expenditure  of  nearly  $100,000, 
has  been  done  with  the  very  best  materials,  and  with  con- 
stant reference  to  honesty,  thoroughness,  and  beauty  of 
result.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  this  building,  it 
may  safely  be  said  that  we  offer  to  God,  this  morning, 
nothing  that  is  cheap  or  mean  or  inferior." 

Grace  House,  at  127  East  Thirteenth  Street,  was  added 
to  Grace  Chapel  and  Grace  Hall  in  1877.  It  was  im- 
mediately made  the  headquarters  of  a  missionary  work 
among  the  Germans,  and  rooms  were  provided  in  it  for  a 
German  pastor,  who  was  now  added  to  the  clerical  staff. 
A  free  reading  room  was  opened  for  working  men,  and 
a  day  nursery  for  working-women.  In  the  nursery  a 
hundred  children  found  shelter  who  might  have  been 
playing  in  the  street,  or  locked  up  in  rooms  where  there 
were  open  fireplaces  or  hot  stoves. 

In  the  midst  of  the  social  ministrations  and  of  these 
provisions  of  buildings  and  appliances  for  the  better  per- 
formance of  them,  Dr.  Potter  continued  his  endeavor 


102  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

to  protect  his  people  from  what  he  called  "the  fallacy  of 
a  false  perspective."  The  peril  of  organization  is  the 
attachment  of  an  exaggerated  value  to  rules  and  methods. 
The  temptation  is  to  forget  on  the  one  hand  that  the  methods, 
being  for  the  purpose  of  the  accomplishment  of  human  re- 
sults, must  be  freely  adapted  to  the  incredible  variety  of 
human  nature ;  and  to  forget  on  the  other  hand  that 
the  effectiveness  of  any  method  depends  upon  the  per- 
sonality which  is  behind  it,  and  that  personality  needs 
the  strength  and  the  tenderness  which  arc  best  nurtured 
in  religion. 

One  of  these  temptations  he  met  in  a  sermon  on  In- 
stitutionalism.  He  emphasized  the  family  idea  in  social 
work.  There  must  be  institutions,  almshouses,  shelters, 
hospitals ;  but  the  ultimate  purpose  of  social  endeavor 
must  be  the  maintenance  and  enrichment  of  family  life. 
The  aim  of  the  social  worker  must  not  be  to  get  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  out  of  it  but  to  improve  the  condition 
of  housing,  rent,  wages,  sanitation,  so  that  the  members 
of  the  family  may  remain  in  it.  It  is  made  plain  in  the 
sermon  that  at  that  time  many  hospitals  were  in  such  a 
condition  that  statistics  could  be  brought  to  show  that 
the  sick  were  quite  as  likely  to  get  well  even  in  the  rooms 
of  tenements  as  in  the  hospital  wards.  It  is  also  stated  in 
so  many  words  that  "no  rich  man  has  yet  been  found 
willing  to  try  the  effect  of  putting  within  the  reach  of  our 
poorer  classes  decently  constructed  and  adequately  lighted, 
drained  and  ventilated  homes."  But  the  main  point  is 
that  "the  most  potent  medicine  in  any  human  ailment 
is  human  sympathy ;  and  that  medicine  is  not  for  sale 
by  apothecaries.  Explain  it  how  we  will,  there  is  some- 
thing in  the  most  bungling  ministries  of  the  meanest  home, 
which,  in  struggling  with  disease  or  facing  suffering,  is 
calculated  to  give  a  sick  man  heart.  He  is  in  an  atmosphere 
in  which  he  is  not  a  mere  patient  with  only  a  number  to 
dist  inguish  him  and  a  ticket  to  describe  him."  The  preacher 
quoted  the  words  of  an  English  social  worker  attending 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF   A   DOWN-TOWN    CHURCH     103 

to  the  children  in  English  institutions  of  charity,  "What 
these  children  really  need  is  a  little  mothering." 

Thus  he  said  on  another  occasion  about  this  time,  "in 
view  of  the  approaching  completion  and  occupancy  of  our 
free  Chapel  and  the  Buildings  connected  with  it,  I  venture 
to  add  a  word  as  to  that  personal  interest  and  activity  on 
the  part  of  the  congregation  of  the  Parish  Church  and 
Chapel,  which  are  so  indispensable  if  our  new  buildings 
are  to  be  in  any  real  sense  a  blessing  to  the  community  in 
the  midst  of  which  they  are  placed.  After  all,  Churches, 
Chapels,  Sunday  School  Buildings,  Houses  of  Mercy  or 
of  Christian  Recreation,  and  the  like  can  only  hope  to 
be  powers  of  blessing  when  they  are  made  the  centre  of  a 
widely  radiating  and  constantly  painstaking  Christian 
sympathy  and  activity.  There  is  no  converting  or  educat- 
ing or  ennobling  power  in  mere  piles  of  brick  and  mortar. 
The  most  splendid  church,  the  most  thoroughly  equipped 
Sunday  School  or  other  Parish  Buildings  are  only  so  many 
costly  impertinences,  unless  they  are  heated  and  lighted 
with  something  better  than  gas,  and  something  more 
warmth-diffusing  than  the  most  ingenious  contrivance  for 
the  circulation  of  hot  air.  Nor  is  it  eloquence,  nor  paid 
service  of  whatever  sort,  that  is  wanted  so  much  as  the 
living  and  loving  hearts  of  living  men  and  women,  who 
have  learned  that  there  is  nothing  so  worthy  of  their  doing 
or  so  rich  in  its  reward  as  work  done  for  Christ's  sake  for 
those  who,  however  careless  or  indifferent,  are  His  re- 
deemed children." 

In  the  midst  of  this  insistence  on  social  service,  Dr. 
Potter  was  emphasizing  the  essential  necessity  of  the  life 
of  the  Spirit.  Beside  Grace  Hall  and  Grace  House  stood 
Grace  Chapel,  the  symbol  of  worship,  the  sanctuary  of 
the  divine  presence,  witnessing  to  the  fact  that  they  who 
would  serve  the  community  well  must  first  seek  strength 
from  on  high.  He  rejoiced  that  it  was  a  free  church,  and 
that  it  was  thus  a  contribution  to  the  free-church  move- 
ment, which  Dr.  Muhlenberg  had  set  forward  in  New 


104  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

York  and  in  which  Dr.  Potter  heartily  believed.  He  liked 
the  democracy  of  it.  In  a  parish  which  was  still  called 
fashionable,  and  whose  parish  church  was  committed  to 
the  system  of  rented  pews,  it  pleased  him  to  have  this  free 
chapel,  testifying,  as  he  said,  to  the  "brotherhood  of  hu- 
manity." Yet  the  freedom  of  it  was  only  a  detail.  The 
supreme  concern  was  to  reenforce  the  parish  industries 
by  the  uplift,  the  consecration,  and  the  power  of  which 
the  Chapel  was  the  symbol.  The  way  into  Grace  Chapel, 
as  he  said,  was  through  Grace  Hall ;  but  the  way  out  was 
into  Grace  Hall  again,  from  the  altar  to  the  classroom  and 
the  workroom,  from  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration  to  the 
case  of  need  at  the  foot  of  the  hill.  "Why  could  we  not 
cast  him  out?"  asked  the  apostles.  "Because  this  kind," 
He  said,  "cometh  forth  only  by  prayer."  The  rector 
repeated  the  lesson  in  sermon  and  in  conference,  by  word 
and  by  example.  He  exalted  the  central  significance  of 
religion,  and  maintained  the  vital  relation  between  prayer 
and  social  efficiency. 

He  preached  about  this  time  on  the  American  Sunday, 
calling  on  his  people  to  maintain  it  in  the  face  of  an  invasion 
of  foreign  customs.  "Whose  country,"  he  asks,  "is  this, 
and  what  language  does  it  speak,  and  by  what  sacred 
traditions  is  it  hallowed?  Who  first  sought  it  out  and 
settled  it  —  subduing  its  wilderness  and  founding  its  cities 
and  opening  its  seaports?  From  whence  got  it  its  law  and 
faith  and  its  Christian  civilization?  Who  have  hallowed 
its  hills  and  its  valleys  by  their  blood,  shed  once  and  yet 
again  in  its  defence?  Call  it  fanaticism,  call  it  intolerance, 
call  it  political  infatuation,  what  you  will.  I  venture  to 
declare  that  it  is  high  time  that  our  brethren  of  other  lands, 
and  other  races,  and  other  religions,  or  no  religion  at  all, 
understood  clearly  and  distinctly  that  while  we  welcome 
them  to  assimilation  to  our  national  life,  America  is  for 
Americans,  and  that  while  we  will  welcome  every  foreigner 
.  .  .  to  our  shores,  they  arc  our  shores  not  his,  and  are  to 
be  ruled  by  our  traditions,  not  those  of  other  people." 


MBS.  ALONZO  POTTEK 
(Sarah  Maria  Xott) 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH     105 

He  pleaded  for  the  resistance  of  Christian  men  and 
women  against  encroachments  on  the  quiet  of  the  old- 
fashioned  Sunday.  "Though  a  certain  liberty  in  things 
indifferent  might,  perhaps,  make  no  great  difference,  if 
you  and  I  were  to  take  it,  we  will  be  careful  how  and  when 
he  takes  it,  not  merely  for  our  own  sakes,  but  equally 
and  always  for  our  brother's  sake.  Instead  of  driving  to 
church  on  Sunday  we  shall  be  willing  to  walk,  and  so  let 
men-servants  and  cattle  rest,  as  well  as  ourselves.  Instead 
of  giving  dinner-parties  on  Sunday,  we  shall  try  to  let 
the  cook  below  stairs  realize  that  it  is  Sunday,  as  well  as 
the  master  above  stairs.  And  by  the  retirement  that  we 
cultivate  and  the  books  and  papers  that  are  seen  in  our 
own  hands,  and  placed  in  the  hands  of  our  guests  or  our 
children,  we  shall  strive  to  indicate  that  there  is  a  differ- 
ence between  Sunday  and  other  days,  instead  of  striving 
rather  to  obliterate  that  difference." 

While  the  parish  was  being  organized  more  and  more 
completely  for  social  work,  the  parish  church  was  at  the 
same  time  being  adorned  and  beautified.  In  1878  the 
rector  preached  on  "Cost  and  Beauty  in  Christian  Wor- 
ship." "It  is  commonly  argued  that  whatever  may  have 
been  the  appropriateness  of  that  earlier  devotion  which 
built  and  beautified  the  temple,  it  is  superannuated,  in- 
appropriate, and  even  (as  some  tell  us)  unwarranted.  .  .  . 
It  is  not  to  adorn  temples  and  garnish  holy  places  that 
Christianity  is  called  nowadays,  but  to  rear  hospitals, 
and  shelter  orphans  and  feed  the  hungry.  It  is  a  diviner 
thing  to  send  bread  to  some  starving  household,  or  to 
minister  in  some  plague-stricken  Memphis  or  New  Orleans, 
to  some  fevered  sufferer,  than  to  build  all  'the  altars  and 
adorn  all  the  sanctuaries  that  ever  were  reared  !  No  !  it 
is  not  —  not  one  whit  diviner  —  noble  and  charitable  as 
such  service  surely  is."  "For  the  spending  of  great  sums 
in  the  increase  of  the  glory  of  the  sanctuary  is  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  man's  recognition  of  the  majesty  of  God,  and  to 
man's  desire  to  give  Him  of  his  best."  This  is  "the  very 


106  HENRY   CODMAN    POTTER 

essence  of  the  cross  of  Christ  —  this  is  the  gospel  itself 
-  a  love  that  does  not  count  the  cost,  a  sacrifice  that 
does  not  haggle  about  the  outlay,  a  devotion  so  utter  and 
so  absolute  that  were  the  whole  realm  of  nature  ours  with 
which  to  repay  it,  our  best  and  choicest  would  still  be  too 
poor  to  give."  "We  have  not  to-day,"  he  said,  "in  all 
this  broad  land  of  ours,  one  single  ecclesiastical  building 
that  is  really  worthy  of  the  enormous  wealth  of  the  coun- 
try, or  of  the  widespread  luxury  of  its  inhabitants.  We 
may  well  rejoice  therefore  and  be  thankful  when  any  Chris- 
tian disciple  strives  anywhere  to  do  anything  that  tells 
out  to  God  and  man,  whether  in  wood  or  stone,  or  gold, 
or  precious  stones,  that  such  an  one  would  fain  consecrate 
to  Him  the  best  and  costliest  that  human  hands  can  buy." 

The  sermon  had  special  reference  to  the  improvements 
which  had  been  made  in  the  church  in  the  summer  of  1878, 
when  it  was  "garnished  with  precious  stones"  and  "en- 
riched by  costly  sculptures,"  and  when  the  beauty  of  the 
new  Holy  Table  was  perplexing  some  parishioners.  Grace 
Chantry  was  built  that  year  by  the  munificence  of  Miss 
Wolfe.  It  was  a  further  contribution  to  the  devotional 
side  of  the  parish  life. 

Looking  back  over  the  ten  years  of  his  rectorship,  Dr. 
Potter  found  abundant  reason  for  gratitude  and  encour- 
agement. The  first  Annual  Report  had  contained  thirty- 
two  pages,  the  tenth  Report  contained  sixty-seven.  There 
were  now  a  dozen  active  parochial  agencies.  Services 
were  conducted  in  German  in  Grace  Chapel,  with  diligent 
pastoral  visitation  among  the  people,  and  instruction  of 
the  children.  The  Day  Nursery  was  open  daily  from 
seven  in  the  morning  till  seven  in  the  evening.  St.  Cather- 
ine's Guild  had  been  organized.  Its  members  were  poor 
women,  under  the  direction  of  a  sister-in-charge.  Its 
work  was  to  nurse  and  otherwise  to  care  for  the  sick  in 
the  homes  of  poverty.  The  idea  was  that  the  women 
themselves,  out  of  their  own  experience,  knew  best  "how 
to  do  the  most  with  the  limited  means  of  nursing  met  with 


THE   ADMINISTRATION   OF  A   DOWN-TOWN   CHURCH     107 

in  our  crowded  tenements."  They  met  monthly  and  re- 
ceived instruction  in  the  care  of  the  sick. 

In  all  this  a  quiet  but  effective  work  was  being  done 
for  the  rich  as  well  as  for  the  poor,  in  the  influence  of  the 
work  upon  the  workers.  "They  will  own/'  said  the  rector, 
"that  their  hearts  have  been  kept  tender  and  their  sym- 
pathies quick  and  warm,  when  otherwise  they  might  easily 
have  become  hard  and  stiff  and  cold.  They  will  own 
that  amid  the  busy  eagerness  of  the  world  which  bids  us 
in  so  many  and  imperious  ways  to  think  first  and  only  of 
self,  they  have  learned  to  think  often  and  generously  of 
others.  They  will  own  that  in  a  generation  which  seems 
in  imminent  danger  of  developing  a  sentiment  of  mutual 
suspicion  and  animosity  between  different  classes  in  our 
social  order,  they  have  learned  to  know  more  intelli- 
gently and  so  to  regard  more  warmly  those  from  whom  in 
many  ways  they  have  been  widely  separated.  They  will 
own  that  concerning  issues  which  were  never  so  grave  as 
at  this  hour,  and  concerning  questions  which  affect  the 
very  existence  of  the  family,  the  church,  and  civilized 
society  they  have  learned  at  least  to  think,  and  to  think 
earnestly  and  hopefully.  And  best  of  all,  I  venture  to 
declare  for  them,  that  they  have  learned  that  life  has  no 
sweeter  or  nobler  privilege  than  that  which  it  offers  to  a 
Christian  disciple,  to  be  with  the  Divine  Master  beside 
the  sorrow  and  ignorance  of  which  the  world  is  still  so  full. 

"I  have  no  word  of  boasting  to  speak,"  he  says,  "con- 
cerning the  work  of  these  past  ten  years,  though,  surely, 
I,  if  any,  might  venture  to  boast  of  it,  since  it  is  the  work 
of  others,  and  not  my  own.  But  I  do  thank  God  for  it, 
even  as  they  thanked  him,  for  whom  in  their  need  it  was 
done." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   LAST   FIVE   YEARS   AT   GRACE 

1878-1883 

DR.  POTTER  was  in  England  in  the  early  months  of  1878, 
just  before  the  meeting  of  the  Lambeth  Conference. 

"I  was  in  London/'  he  says  ("Reminiscences  of  Bishops 
and  Archbishops,"  p.  206),  "in  the  spring  of  1878,  with 
two  of  my  children.  I  did  not  intrude  upon  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  :  first,  because  of  his  recent  and  sore  afflic- 
tion, and  second,  because  the  Lambeth  Conference  was 
then  about  to  assemble,  and  Lambeth  Palace  was  besieged 
by  bishops,  of  whom  I  was  not  then  one.  But  the  Arch- 
bishop found  me  out  in  my  modest  little  London  hotel, 
and  insisted  that  my  children  and  I  should  come  and  stay 
at  Lambeth. 

"I  shall  never  forget  the  morning  of  our  arrival  there. 
My  children  were  shown  at  once  to  their  room,  and  I  was 
conducted  to  the  Archbishop's  study.  It  is  now  nearly 
thirty  years  since  I  then,  for  the  first  time,  saw  him,  but 
I  remember  the  whole  incident  as  if  it  had  happened  yes- 
terday. After  a  few  exchanges  of  greeting  and  inquiry 
of  the  usual  sort,  he  said,  'You  know  Craufurd?  He 
stayed  under  your  roof  ?  '  And  then  rising  he  walked  to 
a  desk  near  by  and  took  from  it  a  photograph  of  his  son. 
Handing  it  to  me,  he  said,  'Does  this  look  like  him?'  And 
as  I  stood  looking  at  the  bright  young  features,  he  turned 
his  back  to  me,  covered  his  face  with  his  hands,  and  burst 
into  tears.  I  have  never  seen  emotion  that  so  deeply 
moved  me.  Archbishop  Tait  had  that  about  him  that 
recalled  his  Scotch  granite.  And  to  see  that  stately  figure 

108 


THE   LAST   FIVE   YEARS  AT   GRACE  109 

and  self-contained  prelate  swept  off  his  feet,  as  it  were, 
by  the  strong  tide  of  parental  feeling  was  a  sight  never 
to  be  forgotten." 

Dr.  Potter  preached  on  Sunday  for  Mr.  Haweis,  whose 
personal  and  theological  peculiarities  had  made  for  him 
an  interesting  place  in  the  life  of  London.  "My  dear," 
said  Mrs.  Tait  to  her  husband  that  day  at  luncheon,  "do 
you  know  where  Dr.  Potter  has  been  this  morning?  He 
has  been  preaching  for  Mr.  Haweis!"  "Well,"  replied 
the  Archbishop,  "I  am  glad  of  it.  I  hope  he  preached  the 
gospel."  It  was  a  suspicion  among  the  orthodox  that  the  gos- 
pel was  preached  rather  infrequently  in  Mr.  Haweis's  pulpit. 

The  Annual  Reports  of  the  activities  of  Grace  Parish 
during  the  last  five  years  of  Dr.  Potter's  rectorship  record, 
among  other  things,  the  progress  of  a  work  the  purpose  of 
which  was  to  provide  the  poor  with  some  of  the  summer 
privileges  of  the  rich. 

In  1878  a  cottage  was  rented  at  Rockaway,  and  children 
sent  from  the  heat  of  the  city  to  the  cool  shore.  "Follow- 
ing the  lead,"  said  the  rector,  "not  of  any  particular  news- 
paper, as  has  been  loudly  and  frequently  claimed,  nor  of 
any  charitable  or  philanthropic  associations,  as  has  been 
scarcely  less  loudly  claimed,  but  of  that  grand  old  man 
who,  more  than  any  other,  has  taught  us  all,  ministers  and 
laymen,  societies  and  newspapers,  the  best  lessons  in  humane 
Christian  work  that  we  have  learned  —  need  I  say  that 
I  mean  the  late  Dr.  Muhlenberg  ?  —  we  attempted,  that 
year,  to  do  something  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  the 
poor,  and  especially  of  poor  children,  in  this  overcrowded 
city  during  the  summer  time."  In  1880  a  farm  house 
was  provided  in  the  country.  The  next  year  the  children 
were  taken  to  the  shore  again.  In  1883  a  parishioner  gave 
five  thousand  dollars  towards  the  purchase  of  a  permanent 
place,  a  lot  of  land  was  secured  at  Far  Rockaway,  and  "a 
building  which  had  hardly  been  dreamed  of  in  April  was 
occupied  soon  after  the  first  of  August."  This  was  called 
Grace-House-by-the-Sea. 


110  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Meanwhile,  by  the  unfailing  generosity  of  Miss  Wolfe, 
a  new  Grace  House  was  erected  beside  the  parish  church. 

"The  completion  of  Grace  House,  adjoining  the  Church 
on  the  north   side,   affords   an  opportunity  for  a   forward 
movement/'  said  Dr.  Potter  in  18SO,  "such  as  I  have  long 
desired.     The    geographical    relations    of    Grace    Church; 
during   the   past   ten   or   twelve  years;   have   considerably 
changed.     It    is    now    largely    surrounded    by    those    who 
live  in  lodgings  and  who  are  without  the  privileges  of  home 
life.     In  New  York  there  is  a  vast  and  increasing  number 
of  young  men  and  women;  many  of  them  of  considerable 
education  and  refinement,  wrho  are  earning  their  own  living 
and  who  have  little  to  cheer  and  refresh  them  while  doing 
so.     They  sleep  in  narrow  quarters  and  have  many  lonely 
evenings.     They  have  few  books   or   other  resources   and 
little    congenial   society ;     and   they   feel   bitterly    and   not 
unjustly  that  others,  more  favored  than  themselves,  might 
easily  do  something  in  these  directions  to  brighten  their 
lives.     We  have  now  for  the  first  time  the  accommodations 
which  enable  us  as  a  parish  to  do  something  to  meet  this 
claim.     There  are  three  or  four  large  and  handsome  rooms 
in  Grace  House  \vhich  it  is  proposed  to  devote  to  those 
who  as  members  of  a  club  or  association  may  be  disposed 
to  make  use  of  them.     Two  of  these  will  be  for  women 
(ladies,  if  the  term  be  preferred)  and  the  others  for  men. 
They  will  be  attractively  fitted  up  with  pictures,  a  library, 
papers,  periodicals,   etc.,  and  on  the  Monday  evenings  of 
each  month  from  October  1st  to  June  1st,  it  is  proposed 
to  have  music,  or  an  exhibition  of  pictures,  or  a  reading, 
or  a  familiar  lecture  on  science,  as  the  case  may  be.     The 
rooms  are  expected  to  be  open  every  evening  in  the  week 
except  Sundays,  and  to  be  available  to  any  person  whose 
application    for    membership    has    been    approved    by    the 
committee  on  admissions,  and  who  has  paid  the  admission 
fee.     It  is  believed  that  in  this  way  a  great  deal  of  pleasure 
and  instruction  may  be  afforded  to  some  whose  lives  have 
but  little  to  brighten  them,  and  that  those;  in  the  parish 


THE   LAST   FIVE   YEARS  AT   GRACE  111 

who  have  a  gift,  whether  of  song  or  story,  or  any  other, 
may  here  be  willing  to  exercise  it,  and  so  find  the  best  re- 
ward for  such  gifts  in  the  happiness  they  give  to  others. 
There  will  be  no  attempt  to  proselyte  those  who  may  seek 
the  Club,  and  the  aim  will  be  rather  to  illustrate  the  spirit 
of  a  kindly  and  brotherly  Christianity  than  formally  to 
inculcate  it.  But  it  is  believed  that  such  a  work  will  help 
to  win  those  who  are  now  indifferent  to  all  religious  claims, 
first  to  understand  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  His  Church, 
and  then  to  welcome  their  teachings." 

The  House  was  also  to  contain  a  diet  kitchen,  a  parish 
reading  room,  choir  room,  a  vestry  room,  apartments 
for  the  working  staff  of  the  day  nursery,  school  rooms, 
etc.  The  building  was  formally  opened  in  January,  1882. 

The  Association  which  the  rector  proposed  in  connection 
with  Grace  House  came  promptly  into  being  and  was 
named  the  Junior  Century  Club.  The  limit  of  member- 
ship, as  the  name  indicates,  was  fixed  at  one  hundred,  but 
before  the  Club  had  been  in  existence  many  months  these 
limits  were  reached,  and  were  presently  extended  to  meet 
the  needs  of  others  who  desired  to  enter.  "There  are  no 
religious  or  ecclesiastical  tests  of  membership,"  said  Dr. 
Potter.  "To  make  one  eligible  to  membership  it  is  simply 
necessary  that  he  or  she  should  be  of  good  moral  character, 
and  properly  certified  as  coming  within  the  class  which  the 
Club  seeks  to  reach.  But  none  the  less  does  such  a  work 
witness  to  the  spirit  of  Him  who  taught  the  law  of  love  and 
the  truth  of  human  brotherhood,  and  none  the  less  does  it 
commend  the  Church  to  those  who  are  strangers  to  her 
principles  and  character.  They  may  not  understand  or 
agree  with  her  doctrinal  standards,  but  they  do  under- 
stand the  interest  that  aims  to  brighten  and  enrich  their 
daily  life,  and  which  translates  the  spirit  of  Christian 
sympathy  into  kindly  deeds.  Such  work  tells  as  surely 
for  God  and  His  Church  as  any  other,  and  is  often  effectual 
in  its  attractive  power  just  in  proportion  as  it  is  indirect." 

Along  with  these  endeavors  to  make  the  church  contrib- 


112  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

ute  to  the  life  of  the  community,  proceeded  a  kind  of 
preaching  calculated  to  develop  and  direct  the  spirit  of 
the  parish.  The  sermons  on  Sunday  set  the  note  for  the 
work  of  the  week.  In  the  rector's  vision  of  the  ideal  parish, 
great  buildings  and  great  congregations  were  but  details. 
He  desired  a  working  parish,  in  which  the  sense  of  privilege 
and  the  sense  of  responsibility  should  go  together,  and  the 
motto  of  the  common  life  should  be  "From  each  according 
to  his  ability,  to  each  according  to  his  need."  He  perceived 
also  that  even  an  ideal  parish  is  but  a  detail  in  an  ideal 
city.  He  had  a  splendid  vision  of  a  Christian  city,  in  which 
the  parishes  of  all  names  should  be  intent  not  on  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  parish,  nor  even  of  the  denomination, 
nor  even  of  the  Christian  Church,  but  on  the  realization  of 
the  City  of  God  in  the  health,  the  character,  and  the  happi- 
ness of  all  the  citizens. 

Dr.  Potter  published  a  book  of  these  sermons  in  1881, 
under  the  title  "Sermons  of  the  City." 

The  beginning  of  all  social  progress,  he  said,  is  in  the 
soul  of  the  individual.  Christianity  is  first  of  all  "a  per- 
sonal message  to  the  personal  soul."  He  declared  that 
this  was  his  essential  message.  "If  the  world  is  to  become 
better  it  must  become  better  because  we  have  consented 
to  become  better.  If  vice  is  to  slink  away  abashed  before 
the  reign  of  a  purer  and  loftier  and  juster  era  in  politics 
and  in  society,  it  must  be  because  that  era  has  been  in- 
augurated in  your  breast  and  in  mine." 

But  the  religion  of  the  individual  is  manifested  in  social 
service.  The  Christian  considers  the  city.  It  is  likely 
that  his  first  emotion  as  he  looks  upon  the  city  with  a  de- 
sire to  help  will  be  one  of  dismay  and  discouragement. 
He  will  see  the  misery  and  the  wickedness  of  the  poor  - 
"Mulberry  Street  and  the  death-dealing  barracks  that 
line  it "  ;  he  will  see  the  moral  insensibility  of  the  rich  ; 
he  will  see  the  apathy  of  those  who  belong  to  the  great 
class  between, --"a  class  which  reads  much,  but  not 
wisely  ;  which  is  equally  open  to  the  social  influences  which 


THE   LAST   FIVE    YEARS  AT   GRACE  113 

corrupt  it  alike  from  below  and  from  above ;  which  is 
most  easily  fired  with  discontent,  and  misled  by  unbelief, 
and  hardened  into  practical  irreligion."  The  first  impulse 
is  to  follow  the  example  of  Him  who  when  He  saw  the  city 
wept  over  it.  Then  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  He  who 
wept  over  the  city  proceeded  immediately  to  do  His  best 
to  save  it.  He  entered  into  it,  preached  to  it,  warned  it, 
pleaded  with  it,  and  died  for  it. 

Jesus  filled  his  followers  with  His  enthusiasm  of  hu- 
manity. "The  early  disciples  of  the  religion  of  Christ 
were  the  most  public-spirited  citizens  whom  the  world  has 
known."  Where  do  we  stand  in  comparison  with  them? 
"Think  what  New  York  might  be  if  we  who  live  in  it  would 
only  resolve  to  construe  our  obligation  of  citizenship  in 
no  narrow  and  selfish  way !  Think  of  the  capital,  the 
energy,  the  swift  and  fearless  intelligence  which  throb 
through  all  the  arteries  of  our  busy  and  complex  life  !  Who 
will  say  if  only  we  could  gather  up  all  this  wealth  and  force 
and  cleverness  and  bring  it  to  bear  even  for  one  day  in 
each  week  upon  the  wrongs  and  evils  of  our  social  and 
municipal  life,  what  revolutions  might  not  be  wrought. 
There  are  sores  in  this  body  politic  of  ours  which  are  rotting 
the  very  bone  and  sinew  of  its  life.  If  you  want  to  know 
what  appalling  degradation,  what  nameless  vices,  what 
brazen  and  reckless  crime  run  riot  in  the  very  daytime 
among  us,  read  the  last  report  of  the  'Society  for  Improv- 
ing the  Condition  of  the  Poor/  and  especially  so  much  of 
it  as  tells  the  story  of  Mr.  George  Booth's  investigations 
of  the  homes  of  the  poor.  It  is  a  revelation  which  ought 
to  make  every  one  among  us  unwilling  to  sleep  in  his  bed 
until  he  has  done  something  to  reach  and  touch  and  re- 
claim the  lost  ones,  who  within  his  own  precincts,  are  already 
fallen  into  the  very  pit  of  damnation,  the  very  crater  of 
hell." 

The  preacher  was  not  content  with  general  descriptions. 
He  informed  his  people  as  to  the  details.  "A  tenement 
house,"  he  said,  "is  ordinarily  from  four  to  six  stories  high, 


114  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

having  frequently  a  shop  on  the  first  floor,  which  when 
used  (as  is  often  the  case)  for  the  sale  of  liquor  has  an 
entrance  from  the  hallway  so  that  it  can  evade  the  Sunday 
law  and  give  secret  access  to  the  inmates  of  the  tenement 
at  all  times.  Four  families  occupy  each  floor,  and  a  set 
of  rooms  consists  of  one  or  two  dark  closets  used  as  bed- 
rooms, and  a  living  room  twice  as  long  as  one  of  these  pews 
and  ten  feet  wide.  The  staircase  is  generally  dark  and 
the  rooms  almost  entirely  without  ventilation.  .  .  .  An 
apartment  consists  ordinarily  of  two  rooms.  One  of  these, 
in  which  all  the  cooking  and  washing  is  done,  is  the  living 
room,  —  which  is  dining  room,  sitting  room,  parlor,  laundry, 
kitchen,  store-room  and  nursery,  all  in  one ;  and  the  other 
is  a  sleeping  room,  perhaps  twice  as  large  as  an  ordinary 
double  bed,  in  which  from  three  to  five  persons  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages,  old  and  young,  sick  and  well,  parents 
and  children,  the  guest  and  the  lodger,  if  there  be  one,  all 
sleep  together.  In  one  of  these  lodging  rooms  the  proprietor 
who  lets  lodgings,  receives  from  eight  to  twelve  lodgers  a 
night,  and  the  room  is  fourteen  feet  long  and  ten  feet  wide." 
Under  the  symbol  of  Gallic,  the  preacher  described  the 
social  "indifferentist,"  who  is  vaguely  aware  that  there  is 
wrong  in  the  world  about  him,  but  cares  for  none  of  these 
things.  "Tell  some  one  a  story  of  wrong,  or  want,  or 
social  sorrow,  and  the  chances  are  you  will  get  the  answer 
'Really,  how  very  unpleasant.  Can  you  not  find  some- 
thing more  agreeable  to  talk  about  than  that?'  There 
is  a  shrinking  from  even  the  sight  of  misery,  an  unwilling- 
ness to  hear  about  want  or  vice  or  sorrow,  which  closes 
sometimes  every  avenue  of  approach,  and  bars  the  way 
against  every  urgency  of  appeal."  "Did  Christ  come 
only  to  teach  us  how  to  build  handsome  churches  and  keep 
them  for  ourselves,  —  to  maintain  a  beautiful  and  sonorous 
worship,  —  to  support  a  dignified  ministry  who  should 
from  time  to  time  lend  a  kind  of  sacred  eclat  to  the  wedding 
or  funeral  or  other  solemnities  with  which  our  life  is  punc- 
tuated ?  Did  He,  —  this  Christ  who  had  not  where  to 


THE    LAST   FIVE    YEARS   AT   GRACE  115 

lay  His  head,  and  whose  feet  and  hands  were  nailed  for 
our  salvation  to  the  accursed  tree,  —  did  He,  think  you, 
hang  on  a  cross  and  die  as  a  felon  that  you  and  I  might  at 
length  be  dispatched  out  of  this  world  with  a  safe  and 
comfortable  viaticum,  and  all  the  while  that  we  stayed  in 
it  think  of  the  sufferings  and  sorrows  of  our  fellowmen 
only  with  a  careless  and  easy  indifference?"  Christ  died, 
he  says,  not  merely  for  you  and  me,  but  for  humanity. 
"Into  the  culture  of  that  older  time  He  came  to  put  the 
one  ingredient  that  it  needed  supremely  to  ennoble  it,  — 
the  ingredient  of  a  divine  unselfishness.  He  came  to  make 
hateful  and  odious  that  cultivated  self-love  which  cares 
nothing  for  another's  welfare.  He  came  to  kill  out  that 
torpid  indifference  that  could  see  wrong  and  cruelty  and 
injustice  and  'care  for  none  of  these  things/  and  to  sup- 
plant it  with  an  inextinguishable  and  self-forgetting  love." 

Thus  the  book  proceeds,  sermon  after  sermon :  on  the 
Perils  of  Wealth,  the  Slaughter  of  the  Innocents,  Pearls 
before  Swine,  One  Another's  Burdens,  the  Impotence  of 
Money,  the  Empty  Life. 

These  sermons  represent  only  one  phase  of  Dr.  Potter's 
ministry  at  Grace  Church.  They  were  selected  by  him 
because  they  had  a  common  theme,  and  because  that  theme 
concerned  people  in  general.  He  was  addressing  the  citi- 
zens of  New  York.  Along  with  these  discourses  went  many 
others,  parochial  and  pastoral,  which  were  intended  for  his 
own  people.  Into  these  sermons  he  brought  his  theology. 
In  them  he  dealt  with  the  distinctive  features  of  his  own 
communion.  In  them  he  ministered  to  those  who  were 
in  doubt  or  in  sin,  gave  guidance  to  the  perplexed,  and 
consoled  the  sorrowful. 

Archdeacon  Nelson  described  in  the  Churchman  (Oct.  24, 
1908)  Dr.  Potter's  homiletical  habits.  "In  the  old  days 
•at  Grace  Church  it  was  his  custom  to  lay  on  a  little  desk 
in  a  corner  of  his  study  as  many  sheets  of  paper,  arranged 
in  pamphlet  form,  as  he  intended  to  fill  with  his  Sunday 
morning  sermon,  and  then  to  fill  them.  Sometimes  he 


116  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

was  interrupted;  but  it  did  not  seem  to  break  the  con- 
tinuity of  his  thought.  And  when  the  sermon  was  finished 
it  was  remarkably  free  from  alterations.  Though  he  carried 
a  few  notes  into  the  pulpit  for  his  Sunday  afternoon  ser- 
mon; he  did  not  look  at  them.  They  seemed  to  be  mere 
outlines  sketched  in  his  study,  and  of  no  further  use  when, 
with  his  strong  grasp  of  his  subject,  he  was  ready  to  speak. 

The  Blank  Book  of  texts  and  themes  ends  with  the 
five-hundredth  sermon,  just  before  the  Lent  of  1870,  but 
it  indicates  the  proportion  which  was  maintained  at  that 
time  between  the  sermons  which  may  be  called  social  and 
the  sermons  which  may  be  called  spiritual.  Among  the 
last  fifty  sermons,  only  six  appear  from  their  subjects  to 
deal  with  public  matters,  and  among  these  are  such  themes 
as  The  General  Convention  of  1868,  The  Ecumenical 
Council,  our  Church  and  our  Times,  American  Church- 
men and  their  Privileges.  The  distinctively  social  ser- 
mons are  on  The  Gospel  and  the  Poor,  The  Lust  of  Gain, 
and  on  Social  Disintegration.  A  sermon  on  The  Duties 
of  a  Christian  Community  to  Sailors  was  preached  on  a 
special  occasion.  The  majority  of  the  sermons  are  on 
such  themes  as  Godward  Wisdom,  Christ  in  the  Storm, 
The  World's  Light,  Christ  Uplifted.  How  far  this  pro- 
portion was  maintained,  no  record  shows.  It  is  a  fair 
inference,  however,  that  it  represents  a  continuing  balance 
of  interest.  It  means  that  the  preacher  was  not  occupied 
most  of  the  time  with  public  questions.  He  wras  concerned 
also,  and  mainly,  with  the  upbuilding  of  the  individual 
Christian  life. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  plain  from  these  published  sermons, 
and  from  the  progress  of  the  parish,  that  the  rector  inter- 
preted religion  not  so  much  in  terms  of  church  or  creed  as 
in  terms  of  character.  It  was  this  quality  in  his  preach- 
ing which  they  remembered  in  Troy  as  a  presentation  of 
religion  "in  a  new  light." 

The  sermons  show  that  he  took  the  creed  quite  simply 
and  as  a  matter  of  course.  He  was  not  a  student  of  either 


THE   LAST  FIVE    YEARS  AT   GRACE  117 

philosophy  or  theology.  He  was  a  diligent  reader  of  books, 
especially  contemporary  books,  but  they  were  for  the  most 
part  books  of  experience  rather  than  books  of  reflection. 
They  had  to  do  with  action  rather  than  with  thought. 
He  introduced  many  quotations,  but  they  were  from  the 
reports  of  charitable  societies,  from  Octavia  Hill's  "Homes 
of  the  London  Poor,"  from  John  Bright,  from  Greg's  "Real- 
izable Ideals,"  from  De  Tocqueville's  "Democracy  in 
America";  once  he  quoted  from  Bushnell,  once  from 
Martineau.  His  interests  were  those  of  a  man  of  affairs. 

It  is  true  that  these  were  special  sermons,  collected 
because  they  had  to  do  with  the  conditions  of  city  life, 
but  even  so,  a  theologian  would  have  colored  them  with 
theology,  and  an  ecclesiastic  would  have  found  an  im- 
mediate panacea  for  social  ills  in  the  Church's  means  of 
grace.  Dr.  Potter  instinctively  approached  these  problems 
practically.  He  saw  social  wrong,  and  was  moved  with 
indignation  and  compassion.  He  stirred  within  the  souls 
of  his  people  a  desire  to  help ;  he  organized  them  into 
assisting  companies  in  parochial  societies ;  he  provided 
them  with  buildings  and  appliances. 

It  is  significant  that  after  one  of  his  sermons,  on  a  Thanks- 
giving Day,  a  previously  indifferent  parishioner,  instead 
of  going  home  to  dinner,  went  down  to  Five  Points  and 
took  part  in  an  endeavor  there  to  bring  light  into  that 
darkness.  People  kept  telling  him  in  Monday  morning 
letters  how  much  his  Sunday  sermons  impelled  them  to 
good  works.  He  had  no  profound  social  theories,  but  he 
had  a  firm  and  unfailing  conviction  that  the  parable  was 
right  when  it  reprobated  the  men  who  passed  by  on  the 
other  side. 

In  all  this  social  enthusiasm  and  wride-visioned  concern 
for  the  general  life,  Henry  Potter  was  not  only  the  son  of 
his  father  but  the  brother  of  his  brothers.  They  were  men 
of  conscience  and  leadership  who  were  intent  not  on 
their  private  gain,  but  on  the  common  good.  Clarkson 
Nott  Potter  was  a  lawyer  of  great  distinction,  and  had 


118  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

served  for  more  than  twenty  years  in  the  Congress  of 
the  United  States,  where  he  had  rendered  conspicuous 
service  as  chairman  of  the  committee  which  investigated 
the  charges  of  fraud  in  the  presidential  election  of  1876. 
Pie  was  a  leader  of  the  New  York  democracy.  Howard 
Potter  had  been  one  of  the  founders  of  the  United  States 
Sanitary  Commission.  He  was  an  incorporator  of  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  and  of  the  American 
Museum  of  Natural  History,  and  a  president  of  the  New 
York  Association  for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the 
Poor.  He  was  a  founder  of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Associa- 
tion. Robert  Brown  Potter  had  been  a  soldier  of  distinction 
in  the  Civil  War,  rising  to  the  post  of  Major-General,  after 
a  career  of  splendid  courage  and  notable  achievement. 
Edward  Tuckerman  Potter,  musician  and  architect,  was  de- 
voting himself  to  the  study  of  the  housing  of  the  poor, 
planning  model  tenements.  Eliphalet  Nott  Potter  wras 
president  of  Union  College.  James  Neilson  Potter  was  a 
colonel  in  the  Civil  War.  William  Appleton  Potter  was  su- 
pervising architect  of  the  Treasury  Department  at  Washing- 
ton. Frank  Hunter  Potter  was  a  musician,  and  a  journalist 
of  influence. 

In  the  North  American  Review  for  February,  1883,  Dr. 
Potter  contributed  to  a  "symposium"  on  "The  Revision 
of  Creeds."  It  is  true  (he  admitted)  that  creeds  (taking 
the  word  in  a  large  sense)  differ  from  the  opinions  of  many 
of  the  people  who  hold  them.  But  some  of  these  creeds 
were  originally  the  expressions  of  a  reaction,  and  reactions 
commonly  go  too  far.  Some  of  them  were  endeavors  to 
speak  in  the  voice  of  a  new  infallibility,  but  all  infallibility 
is  discredited  by  the  clearer  vision  of  the  next  generation. 
"A  great  religious  body,  to  which  England  owes  a  vast 
debt  of  gratitude,  demands  of  its  ministers  that  'before 
any  minister  is  admitted  into  full  connection,  he  shall  give 
in  the  presence  of  the  Conference  a  full  and  explicit  declara- 
tion of  his  faith  as  to  the  doctrines  taught  by  Mr.  Wesley 
in  his  first  four  volumes  of  sermons,  and  his  notes  on  the 


THE   LAST  FIVE   YEARS  AT   GRACE  119 

New  Testament.'  I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  Mr. 
Wesley's  sermons  and  notes,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
scholars  of  his  communion  to-day  will  care  to  pin  their 
faith  so  explicitly  as  the  above  regulation  demands,  to  the 
opinions  and  interpretations  of  a  single  individual ;  and 
one  can  at  least  sympathize  with  one  of  them  who  is  said 
to  have  exclaimed,  'If  we  must  have  a  Pope,  let  us  have 
a  living  and  not  a  dead  one  ! ' ' 

He  admitted  also  that  "it  is  a  grievous  disadvantage  to 
any  teacher  that  he  must  seem  to  be  affirming  or  holding 
dogmas  which  do  not  express  his  inmost  belief,  and  it  is 
inevitably  injurious  to  any  people  to  be  bound  by  'Con- 
fessions of  Faith'  which  they  suspect  their  teachers  of 
having  outgrown,  and  which  have  no  potential  voice  of 
authority  to  themselves." 

What  is  needed,  he  said,  instead  of  revision,  is  "a  juster 
estimate  of  the  purpose  of  a  creed.  It  cannot,  from  the 
very  nature  of  things,  be  an  exhaustive  definition  of  the 
faith."  And  also  better  than  revision  would  be  a  general 
return  from  complicated  formulas  to  the  simple  Apostles' 
Creed.  "Greater  and  more  helpful  than  any  creed,  it  is 
to  be  presumed,  is  the  personality  of  Him  in  whom  it  is 
its  office  to  affirm  our  faith ;  and  a  creed  which  concerns 
itself  chiefly  with  the  facts  of  His  life  and  death  and  resur- 
rection is  certainly  more  likely  to  be  serviceable  than 
any  other." 

The  article  is  of  a  piece  with  all  the  utterances  of  his 
ministry  in  its  expression  of  Dr.  Potter's  interest  in  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  rather  than  in  the  Gospel  about  Jesus,  in 
faith  rather  than  in  the  faith. 

Under  the  inspiration  of  the  rector's  social  preaching, 
and  in  the  light  and  warmth  of  his  own  example,  the  in- 
dustries of  Grace  Church  continued  and  increased. 

In  1880,  the  Church  of  the  Nativity  on  Avenue  C,  which 
had  been  deprived  of  its  English  congregation  by  an  in- 
vasion of  the  neighborhood  by  Germans,  and  then  had 
been  deprived,  by  various  complications  and  misunder- 


120  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

standings,  of  the  aid  of  Trinity  Church,  which  had  main- 
tained a  German  mission  there,  applied  to  Grace  Church 
for  help.  This  help  was  given,  and  societies  of  German 
people  and  services  in  their  language  were  maintained  by 
the  parish.  In  1882,  a  branch  of  the  Girls'  Friendly  Society 
was  organized  in  the  parish  church.  In  the  same  year,  a 
missionary  was  appointed  to  minister  to  persons  in  public 
institutions  on  Ward's  and  Blackwell's  Island,  and  in  tene- 
ment houses  on  the  East  Side. 

"I  am  glad  to  think,"  said  the  rector,  "that  the  work 
of  the  parish  has  not  merely  run  in  well-worn  and  old- 
time  ruts.  In  Grace-House-by-the-Sea,  in  the  window- 
gardening  prizes  of  the  Benevolent  Society,  in  the  increased 
facilities  and  gatherings  of  the  Junior  Century,  in  both 
the  new  work  and  the  new  quarters  of  the  Day  Nursery, 
there  are  tokens  of  enlargement,  of  flexibility,  of  the  spirit 
of  adaptedness  to  fresh  emergencies  and  new  opportu- 
nities, without  which  any  work  becomes  first  stereotyped 
and  then  paralyzed." 

The  Year  Book  for  1883  occupied  a  hundred  and  thirteen 
pages,  and  contained  the  reports  of  sixteen  societies.  The 
rector  called  attention  to  the  value  of  the  work  in  its  effect 
on  the  lives  of  those  who  were  engaged  in  doing  it.  "It  is 
a  time/'  he  said,  "of  feverish  living  and  of  manifold  temp- 
tations, especially  for  those  to  whom  has  been  given  in 
any  measure  the  stewardship  of  wealth  or  leisure  or  per- 
sonal gifts.  How  the  fierce,  hot,  greedy  world  vulgarizes 
our  aspirations  and  eats  the  heart  out  of  our  best  beliefs 
and  desires  !  What  shall  save  young  men  and  young  girls 
in  an  age  when  the  paganism  of  the  old  Roman  decadence, 
with  its  coarse  luxury  and  its  prodigal  extravagance,  seems 
in  danger  of  being  throned  anew  among  us  ?  Nothing  — 
nothing  but  the  power  of  a  nobler  interest  and  a  loftier 
service  than  that  rendered  to  the  world,  the  flesh  and  the 
devil.  This  is  what  the  empty  heart  and  empty  hands 
alike  are  waiting  for  —  something  to  do,  —  something  to 
do  for  another,  —  something  to  do  for  another  under  the 


THE    LAST   FIVE    YEARS   AT   GRACE  121 

loving  spell  of  Him  who  has  done  most  of  all  for  us,  in  that 
He  hath  loved  us  and  given  Himself  for  us !" 

Dr.  William  Reed  Huntington,  who  presently  succeeded 
him,  summarized  the  material  and  visible  results  of  Dr. 
Potter's  rectorship.  "Most  of  the  memorial  windows 
which  make  the  church  so  attractive,  the  chimes,  and 
the  marble  spire  surmounting  the  belfry  wrhere  they  hang, 
date  all  of  them  from  that  period.  The  little  Chantry, 
so  manifoldly  useful,  the  Chancel  Organ,  Grace  House  — 
our  administrative  centre  —  the  Memorial  House,  better 
known  as  the  Day  Nursery  [the  gift  of  Mr.  Morton],  Grace 
Chapel  —  the  forerunner  of  our  present  East  Side  Settle- 
ment —  a  building  fully  up  to  the  standards  of  that  day, 
Grace-House-by-the-Sea,  a  summer  home  for  children  at 
Far  Rockaway,  all  these  belong  to  the  accomplishments 
of  those  fifteen  years." 

These  results,  material  and  visible,  can  be  definitely 
set  down  and  reported.  The  greater  achievements  of  the 
Grace  Church  rectorship  elude  the  historian.  They  were 
written  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  in  the  moral  prog- 
ress of  the  city.  The  Tribune,  at  the  time  of  Dr.  Potter's 
election  to  the  bishopric,  prophesied  his  conduct  in  that 
office  from  his  service  in  the  parish.  "The  keynote  of  his 
administration  will  be  work,  and  the  most  practical  kind 
of  work.  He  will  seek  to  make  the  church  which  he  repre- 
sents a  living  force  in  the  world  of  to-day.  It  wrill  be  his 
aim  to  make  men  forget  the  theoretical  differences  that 
have  so  often  separated  them  in  the  past,  and  to  put  before 
them  the  vast  and  complex  problems  of  the  modern  work- 
a-day  world.  He  will  try  to  make  the  Episcopal  Church 
not  only  the  church  of  the  rich  and  learned  but  the  church 
as  well  of  the  poor  and  simple." 

He  retained  his  rectorship,  after  his  consecration  as 
bishop,  until  the  end  of  the  year,  tiding  over  the  parish 
till  the  new  rector  was  elected.  On  Sunday,  December 
30th,  1883,  he  preached  his  farewell  sermon.  His  text  was 
"Peace  be  within  thy  walls,  and  plenteousness  within  thy 


122  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

palaces."  The  church,  he  said,  is  a  palace  of  plenty  in 
the  treasure  of  faith  which  she  possesses,  in  her  ample 
provision  for  divine  worship,  and  in  the  opportunity  which 
she  offers  for  effective  social  service.  "Looking  back  to- 
day, after  fifteen  years  and  more,  I  rejoice  to  remember 
that  this  parish  has  at  least  striven  to  be  plenteous  in 
peace,  affluent  in  faith,  worship  and  good  works.  May 
God  keep  it  so,  and  more  and  more  make  it  so,  through  all 
the  years  to  come." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   BEGINNING   OF  THE   EPISCOPATE 

1883-1884 

DR.  HORATIO  POTTER  had  been  bishop  of  New  York 
for  nearly  thirty  years.  Born  in  1802,  he  was  now  be- 
ginning to  feel  the  serious  infirmities  of  age.  On  the  12th 
of  September,  18S3,  he  wrote  to  the  Standing  Committee 
of  the  diocese  asking  for  an  assistant.  "It  is  now  four 
months/'  he  said,  "  since,  exhausted  by  the  great  labors 
which  usually  accompany  the  spring  appointments,  I  was 
overtaken  by  a  severe  attack  of  pneumonia.  Although 
fully  recovered  from  this  attack,  I  find  myself  at  present 
greatly  reduced  in  strength,  and  unable,  with  the  weight 
of  so  many  years  upon  me,  to  recover  the  health  that  was 
formerly  vouchsafed  to  me.  It  is  very  evident  to  me, 
and  it  is,  indeed,  the  opinion  of  my  physician  that,  even 
if  my  life  should  be  considerably  prolonged,  I  shall  never 
have  the  physical  strength  that  is  necessary  to  endure 
the  fatigues  and  exposures  incident  to  the  active  duties  of 
the  Diocese."  He  accordingly  proposed  his  "complete 
withdrawal  from  the  administration  of  the  Diocese,"  "and 
asked  the  Standing  Committee  to  make  known  the  situa- 
tion to  the  approaching  Convention/'  "  in  whatever  manner 
they  may  deem  best  calculated  to  secure  for  me  the  entire 
relief  from  official  care  and  duty,  which  has  become  ab- 
solutely necessary,  and  to  promote  the  highest  interests 
of  the  Church." 

The  Diocesan  Convention  met  in  St.  Augustine's  Chapel 
on  Wednesday,  the  26th  of  September,  and  the  Bishop's 
letter  was  read.  The  Standing  Committee  stated  that 

123 


124  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

in  its  views  "  the  wish  of  the  Bishop,  the  requirements  of 
the  Canons  and  the  exigencies  of  the  work  of  the  Diocese, 
demand  the  early  election  of  an  Assistant  Bishop."  A 
committee  was  appointed  "to  express  the  deep  sense  of 
regret  of  this  Convention  upon  the  receipt  of  the  com- 
munication read  from  the  Bishop."  A  letter  was  addressed 
him  recalling  the  " years  of  unbroken  peace"  which  the 
Diocese  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  enjoyed 
under  his  administration,  appreciating  his  "large  and 
liberal  policy"  in  the  conduct  of  its  affairs,  and  hoping 
that  release  from  the  burden  of  office  might  result  in  his 
being  permitted,  for  many  years  yet  to  come,  to  see  the 
increasing  fruit  of  his  labors.  On  Thursday,  the  27th  of 
September,  at  noon,  the  Convention  proceeded  to  the  elec- 
tion of  an  Assistant  Bishop. 

The  names  of  fourteen  distinguished  clergymen  were 
thereupon  placed  in  nomination.  On  the  third  ballot 
Henry  Codman  Potter  was  elected.  The  next  highest 
number  of  votes  had  been  received  by  Dr.  Morgan  Dix. 
On  motion  of  Dr.  Eigenbrodt,  the  election  was  made  unani- 
mous. "A  public  thanksgiving  to  Almighty  God  for  the 
happy  termination  of  this  important  business"  took  the 
form  of  a  singing  of  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis,  and  on 
the  following  day  the  Assistant-Bishop-elect  accepted  the 
election. 

"It  has  seemed  proper,"  he  said,  "that  I  should  come 
here  this  morning,  and  myself  make  answer  to  the  com- 
munication which  reached  me  yesterday  afternoon  from 
the  Convention. 

"I  need  not  tell  you  how  overwhelmed  I  have  been  by 
the  action  of  this  body.  My  own  words  upon  this  floor 
yesterday  made  plain,  I  think,  with  what  unfeigned  re- 
luctance I  faced  either  the  honors  or  the  burdens  of  the 
Episcopal  office,  and  how  resolute  was  my  purpose  to 
refuse  even  the  proffer  of  them.  But  your  action  in  this 
place,  the  manner  of  it,  and  most  of  all  the  spirit  of  it,  has 
taught  me  somewhat  sharply  and  sternly  that  in  a  question 


THE   BEGINNING   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE  125 

such  as  this  I  must  have  respect  to  some  other  judgment 
than  my  own,  and  must  consent  to  see  my  duty  in  that 
wider  vision  of  it  which  expresses  itself  in  the  voices  of  my 
brethren  and  of  the  Church.  Your  proceedings  yesterday 
have  seemed  to  take  from  me  in  this  matter  the  power  of 
discretion,  and  to  teach  me  that  here,  at  any  rate,  it  is 
mine  to  obey. 

"And  so  I  come  here  this  morning  to  say  that  I  acquiesce 
in  your  decision,  and  submit  to  that  call  which,  I  trust,  is 
the  call  of  God,  as  it  has  come  to  me  by  your  voices.  Dear 
brethren,  judge  me  gently  in  this  new  and  strange  relation. 
How  can  I  bear  such  burdens  as  loom  up  before  me,  save  as 
you  shall  give  me  your  sympathy  and  your  prayers,  and 
oftentimes  your  generous  forbearance  ? 

"I  am  here  to-day  to  throw  myself  upon  your  com- 
passion and  to  ask  for  your  counsel  and  cooperation.  Sin- 
gularly inexperienced  in  matters  of  diocesan  administration 
of  which  the  youngest  presbyter  in  the  diocese  could  scarcely 
have  less  knowledge  than  I  —  with  a  record  of  service  so 
wise,  so  unwearied  and  so  self-forgetful  behind  me,  that, 
kinsman  as  I  am  of  him  who  has  made  it,  I  may  not  refuse 
here  to  remember  or  to  speak  of  it  —  how  can  I  confront 
the  burden  that  is  before  me  in  following  in  the  footsteps 
of  him  who  for  nearly  thirty  years  has  gone  to  and  fro  upon 
his  Master's  errands  in  this  diocese,  without  a  feeling  of 
profound  dismay?  At  such  a  moment  one  must  needs  cry 
out,  'Who  is  sufficient  for  these  things?'  and  he  must  needs 
remember  that  'our  sufficiency,'  yours  and  mine  is,  and  is 
alone 'of  God.'" 

He  added  a  word  of  appreciation  of  the  personal  courtesy 
of  Dr.  Dix.  "To  my  distinguished  brother,  the  rector  of 
Trinity  Parish,  I  wish,  here  and  in  your  presence,  to  express 
my  profound  gratitude  for  words  privately  spoken  to  me, 
of  such  chivalrous  kindness  and  cordiality,  and  for  assur- 
ances of  such  singular  nobleness  and  generosity,  as  I  can 
never  forget." 

The   votes    of   the    Convention    had    represented    some 


126  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

measure  of  party  preference.  The  low  churchmen  had 
voted  for  Dr.  Potter,  the  high  churchmen  for  Dr.  Dix. 
The  new  bishop  wished  to  make  it  plain  that  his  election 
was  not  a  partisan  victory.  He  would  come  into  office 
with  the  confidence  and  affection  of  all  his  brethren  to 
continue  the  large  and  liberal  policy  of  his  predecessor. 

Such  an  administration  was  commonly  expected  of  him. 
Between  his  election  and  his  consecration  he  attended  the 
funeral  of  Dr.  Ewer,  and  Dr.  Thomas  McKee  Brown,  of 
the  Church  of  St.  Mary  the  Virgin,  wrote  to  him  in  ap- 
preciation of  his  sympathy.  "Let  me  thank  you,"  said 
Dr.  Brown,  "for  your  kindness  in  coming  from  the  midst 
of  so  many  duties  to  pay  respect  to  his  memory.  I 
recall  that  Dr.  Ewer  has  been  much  criticised  in  his  life- 
time, and  I  know  that  for  our  Assistant  Bishop  to  bear 
his  testimony  to  his  good  name  and  to  his  worth  as  a  pres- 
byter of  the  diocese  (together  with  the  large  attendance  of 
men  of  all  schools  of  thought)  is  an  augury  of  the  peace 
and  charity  that  has  come  after  years  of  struggle  and 
possible  misunderstanding." 

The  service  of  consecration  was  held  in  Grace  Church 
on  Saturday,  October  20.  The  General  Convention  was 
in  session  in  Philadelphia,  and  they  took  a  recess  for 
the  purpose  of  attending.  Thus  there  was  a  long  and 
imposing  procession :  the  students  of  the  General  Theo- 
logical Seminary  in  their  black  gowns,  the  clergy  to  the 
number  of  several  hundred,  and  forty-three  bishops.  No 
such  array  had  ever  been  seen  before  in  the  church  in  this 
country.  But  it  rained  that  day,  and  the  building  was  in 
the  twilight  which  preceded  the  splendor  of  electricity. 
Among  the  clergy  the  reporters  noticed  that  "two  Oxford 
graduates  were  distinguished  by  their  crimson  ecclesiastical 
hoods."  The  only  other  touch  of  color  was  given  by  a 
cross  of  rod  and  white  roses  on  the  altar. 

Bishop  Stevens  said  the  Commandments,  Bishop  Lay  of 
Easton  read  the  Epistle,  and  Bishop  Whipplc  of  Minnesota 
the  Gospel,  Bishop  Neely  of  Maine  led  the  recitation  of 


THE   BEGINNING   OF   THE    EPISCOPATE  127 

the  Nicene  Creed,  Bishop  Williams  of  Connecticut  preached 
the  sermon. 

The  preacher  recalled  the  days  when  he  was  rector  of 
St.  George's  Church,  Schenectady,  in  Henry  Potter's  boy- 
hood. "I  remember  years  long  past  for  you  and  me,  when 
in  that  old  church  which  I  am  sure  must  be  almost  as  dear 
to  you  as  it  will  ever  be  to  me,  you  in  your  early  youth, 
and  your  venerated  father  in  his  strong  manhood  were 
among  those  to  whom  it  was  my  privilege  to  minister." 
In  his  sermon  he  emphasized  the  relation  of  the  clergy, 
and  especially  of  the  bishops,  to  the  mind  of  their  genera- 
tion. They  were  to  be  defenders  of  the  faith.  "In  an 
age,"  he  said,  "when  a  subtle  rationalism  takes  on  the 
guise  of  sentiment ;  when  the  phraseology  of  revelation  is 
on  the  lips  without  one  particle  of  its  meaning  in  the  mind  ; 
when  the  Word  of  God  is  patronized  and  the  Son  of  God  is 
condescendingly  applauded,  as  men  applaud  the  work  of 
a  skilful  artist,  the  Episcopate  must  stand  in  the  fore- 
front." He  dwelt  upon  the  temptation  of  the  modern 
bishops  to  be  so  occupied  in  administrative  work  as  to 
neglect  the  apostolic  counsel  "give  attendance  to  read- 
ing." "Men,"  he  said,  "are  willing  enough  that  the  bishop 
should  seek  for  the  'cloke'  in  which  he  is  to  travel  on  his 
round  of  duty,  but  they  prefer  that  he  should  take  no 
thought  for  the  'books  and  parchments. ":  "If  the  people, 
misled  by  false  or  imperfect  estimates  of  life,  will  compel 
their  chief  pastors  to  become  'like  unto  a  wheel/  the 
power  of  which  is  measured  only  by  the  number  and  rapid- 
ity of  its  revolutions,  they  must  not  wonder  if  they  also 
see  them  'as  the  stubble  before  the  wind." 

Then  the  service  proceeded,  Bishop  Lay  and  Bishop 
Howe  of  Central  Pennsylvania  being  the  presenters.  It 
fell  to  Bishop  Clark  of  Rhode  Island  to  "move  the  con- 
gregation present  to  pray,"  and  to  Bishop  Seymour  of 
Springfield  to  lead  them  in  the  litany.  Bishop  Clark 
asked  the  prescribed  questions.  During  the  putting  on 
of  "the  rest  of  the  Episcopal  habit"  an  "anthem  of  inves- 


128  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

titure"  was  sung,  beginning,  "The  Lord  hear  thee  in  the 
day  of  trouble." 

The  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks  and  the  Rev.  Charles  T.  Olmsted 
then  brought  in  the  Presiding  Bishop.  Bishop  Benjamin 
Bosworth  Smith  of  Kentucky  was  almost  ninety  years  of 
age.  He  had  been  a  bishop  for  half  a  century.  He  had 
been  given  an  assistant  in  the  work  of  his  diocese,  and  was 
spending  his  last  years  in  New  York.  He  refused  the 
offer  of  a  wheeled  chair  as  a  means  of  comfortable  access 
to  the  chancel,  and  insisted  upon  walking  in,  entering, 
however,  only  for  the  moment  of  his  laying  on  of  hands 
upon  the  head  of  the  elected  bishop,  and  then  being  almost 
carried  by  his  escorting  presbyters.  "When  I  rose  from 
my  knees,"  said  Bishop  Potter,  recounting  the  incident, 
"after  having  knelt  to  receive  from  his  hands  my  episcopal 
commission,  he  closed  the  ordinal  from  which  he  had  been 
reading  the  words  of  consecration,  and  handed  it  to  me, 
saying,  'There,  Henry,  you  can  keep  that  book.  I  shall 
never  use  it  again.'  And  he  never  did."  This  was  his 
last  official  act. 

Bishop  Williams  was  the  celebrant  in  the  Holy  Com- 
munion, assisted  by  Bishop  Littlejohn  of  Long  Island, 
Bishop  Huntington  of  Central  New  York,  and  Bishop 
Doane  of  Albany.  Bishop  Horatio  Potter  was  confined 
to  his  bed. 

That  evening  the  new  bishop  visited  the  Midnight  Mission 
which  was  under  the  charge  of  the  Sisters  of  St.  John  Baptist, 
and  confirmed  four  persons. 

The  next  day,  being  Sunday,  he  went  in  the  n.orning  to 
Blackwell's  Island  and  preached  to  four  hundred  young  men 
in  prison. 

"The  room  was  long  and  narrow,  lined  off  [being  the 
dining  room]  by  parallel  rows  of  long  tables  as  wide  as  a 
soup-plate.  On  a  narrow  strip  of  worn  carpeting,  stood 
the  reading-desk  covered  with  red  cloth.  Behind  the 
raised  platform  was  a  grated  window  before  which  hung 
a  maroon-colored  curtain  with  the  word  Sanctus  embroidered 


THE    BEGINNING   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE  129 

upon  it.  During  the  service  swallows  fluttered  up  among 
the  rafters."  "I  thank  God,"  said  the  Bishop,  "for  the 
privilege  of  beginning  my  work  as  a  missionary."  He 
spoke  on  the  universality  of  temptation,  and  on  the  uni- 
versal opportunity  of  pardon  and  amendment. 

Meanwhile  the  bishops  were  returning  to  Philadelphia 
to  resume  their  discussion  of  the  case  of  Bishop  Riley. 
He  had  been  consecrated  in  1879  as  Bishop  of  the  Valley 
of  Mexico,  but  both  the  appointment  and  the  appointee 
had  proved  unsatisfactory.  The  Convention  was  now 
telegraphing  to  him  to  come  and  give  an  account  of  his 
stewardship ;  but  he  was  too  busy,  he  said,  to  come ! 

The  Assistant  Bishop  began  his  work  with  a  profound 
sense  of  its  importance  and  its  difficulty.  He  always 
seemed  indeed  to  do  things  easily.  He  never  complained 
of  the  incessant  demands  which  were  made  upon  him,, 
neither  did  he  yield  to  the  more  subtle  temptation  to  pride 
himself  upon  his  manifold  activity,  and  to  talk  about  it. 
He  was  very  reticent  about  himself.  He  had  an  uncom- 
mon facility,  and  an  unusual  ability  to  work  without  worry- 
ing. At  the  same  time,  he  worked  hard,  and  felt  it.  And 
this  new  and  unaccustomed  task  bore  upon  him  heavily. 
In  the  beginning  of  October  he  had  written  to  Dr.  Packard, 
his  old  teacher  in  the  Virginia  Seminary:  "Your  note  was 
a  great  comfort  and  gratification  to  me,  and  I  am  glad  to 
have  your  assurance  that  in  the  large  task  which  has  so 
unexpectedly  come  to  me,  I  may  have  your  sympathy 
and  prayers.  I  have  a  difficult  and  delicate  work  before 
me,  and  I  hope  that  in  the  doing  of  it  my  fathers  and  brethren 
will  judge  me  gently  and  bear  with  me  patiently."  In 
discussing  the  matter  with  Bishop  Huntington  there  were 
tears  in  his  eyes.  "During  a  visit  to  me  in  the  Tyrol," 
says  Mrs.  Thompson,  "I  said  one  day,  'After  our  dear 
Uncle  Horatio  I  hope  to  see  you  bishop  of  New  York.' 
I  have  never  forgotten  the  solemn  expression  of  his  face 
as  he  answered,  'If  a  man  desire  martyrdom,  there  it  is.'' 

All  the  responsibilities  of  administration  rested  now  upon 


130  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  Assistant  Bishop.  Bishop  Horatio  Potter  had  with- 
drawn entirely,  as  he  said,  from  participation  in  the  affairs 
of  the  diocese.  "Will  the  bishop  be  good  enough  to  inform 
the  undersigned  if  he  has  any  commands  for  him?"  This 
note,  with  Henry  C.  Potter's  name  attached,  is  sent  in  to 
the  sick  room  of  the  aged  bishop.  It  is  brought  back  with 
a  single  blotted  word  in  reply:  "None.  H.  P."  Many 
similar  communications  must  have  passed  between  them : 
the  younger  man  deferential,  ready  to  be  of  service,  the 
elder  leaving  everything  in  his  hands. 

The  New  York  of  the  early  eighties  was  ministered  to  in 
religion  by  a  company  of  able  men.  Beside  Dix  at  Trinity, 
were  Arthur  Brooks  at  the  Incarnation,  Donald  at  the 
Ascension,  Houghton  at  the  Transfiguration,  Tiffany  at 
Zion,  Rainsford  at  St.  George's,  McKim  at  Holy  Trinity, 
Harlem,  Cornelius  Smith  at  St.  James's,  Satterlee  at  Cal- 
vary, Peters  at  St.  Michael's,  Gallaudet  at  St.  Ann's,  and 
Morgan  at  St.  Thomas's.  Huntington  was  beginning  his 
noble  rectorship  at  Grace.  Beecher,  Tallmadge  and  Storrs 
were  preaching  in  Brooklyn ;  John  Hall  and  Robert  Collyer 
in  New  York. 

The  life  of  the  city  was  abundantly  interesting.  Lord 
Coleridge  and  Matthew  Arnold  were  lecturing  in  the  month 
of  Dr.  Potter's  consecration.  Henry  Irving  and  Ellen 
Terry  were  playing  Shakespeare.  People  were  concerned 
about  the  campaign  of  Mr.  Seth  Low  for  reelection  as 
mayor  of  Brooklyn,  and  were  watching  from  a  distance 
the  campaign  of  Benjamin  Butler  for  reelection  as  governor 
of  Massachusetts.  It  was  an  interesting  place  in  an  inter- 
esting time. 

The  rector  of  Grace  Church  had  taken  an  active  and 
useful  part  in  civic  life,  but  in  a  quiet  way,  devoting  him- 
self mainly  to  the  upbuilding  of  his  parish.  The  Assistant 
Bishop  of  New  York  attended  quite  as  closely  to  his  im- 
mediate duties.  His  election  and  consecration  attracted 
little  attention  outside  of  his  own  communion.  The  official 
journal  which  he  kept  and  printed  according  to  the  require- 


THE   BEGINNING   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE  131 

ments  of  the  canons  is  filled  with  the  record  of  meetings 
and  addresses.  He  speaks  to  the  Parish  Workers  of  Calvary 
Church,  and  to  the  Working  Men's  Clubs  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Communion ;  he  presides  at  the  meetings  of  the 
trustees  of  Trinity  School  and  of  St.  Stephen's  College ; 
he  addresses  a  meeting  assembled  in  the  interests  of  the 
Church  Temperance  Society,  and  holds  a  service  for  women 
engaged  in  church  work ;  all  in  a  single  month,  and  in  addi- 
tion to  visitation  and  Sunday  sermons.  One  entry  only 
suggests  that  wide  range  of  public  interests  in  which  he 
came  gradually  to  take  so  conspicuous  a  part :  he  delivered 
an  address  at  the  Anniversary  of  the  Huguenot  Society. 
Everything  else  was  such  as  one  would  find  in  the  con- 
temporary journal  of  any  other  working  bishop. 

The  address  to  women  engaged  in  church  work  (Grace 
Church,  November  27,  1883)  was  the  first  of  a  series  of 
such  conferences,  continuing  the  interest  which  he  had 
already  shown  in  the  encouragement  of  deaconesses  and 
sisterhoods,  f;  It  was  taken  down  in  shorthand  and  after- 
wards published  with  four  other  addresses  spoken  on  like 
occasions.  The  purpose  was  to  deepen  and  enrich  the 
spirit  by  which  the  quality  of  such  work  is  determined. 
Taking  for  his  subject  "The  Great  Exemplar,"  he  lifted 
the  minds  of  the  workers  above  the  details  of  their  material 
service.  "Absorbed,"  he  said,  "with  questions  of  finance 
or  charitable  housekeeping,  buying  clothing  or  packing 
a  box  for  a  missionary,  dressing  a  wound,  dispensing  an 
alms,  or  washing  some  poor  waif  of  the  garret  or  of  the 
street  into  something  like  outer  whiteness,  if  no  more,  it 
may  be  said  that  we  are  easily  tempted  to  forget  the  higher 
ends  of  all  Christian  work,  to  forget  that  the  life  is  more 
than  meat  and  the  body  than  raiment,  to  forget  that  our 
service  itself  is,  or  should  be,  a  nurture  of  our  own  souls 
in  the  life  of  prayer  and  faith,  and  saintly  speech  and 
thoughts,  instead,  like  her  whom  her  Lord  gently  but 
distinctly  admonished,  to  be  'cumbered  with  much  serv- 
ing.'" 


132  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

In  the  midst  of  this  address  there  is  a  glimpse  of  the 
inner  life  of  the  speaker,  beset,  like  those  to  whom  he  spoke, 
with  the  limitations  of  perpetual  activity.  Unconsciously 
he  revealed  his  own  devout  ideals  and  endeavors.  "  Un- 
doubtedly," he  said,  "Christ  had  His  moments  of  stillness. 
But  if  the  story  of  the  gospels  is  to  be  believed,  how  few 
they  were !  How  He  hastens  unrestingly  from  town  to 
town  !  How  no  privacy  of  friend's  or  entertainer's  guest- 
table  protects  Him  from  the  sinners  and  sufferers  who 
throng  to  touch  and  hear  Him  !  And  yet,  shot  through 
and  through  was  all  the  service  with  the  silver  thread  of  a 
divine  calmness  and  peace.  His  tasks  never  flurry  Him, 
His  work  never  masters  Him,  His  engagements  never  en- 
slave Him."  He  considered  the  weariness  and  discour- 
agement of  Jesus,  and  His  endurance  of  criticism  and  mis- 
understanding ;  and  in  it  all,  unfailingly  sustaining  Him, 
"an  all-pervading  consciousness  of  a  divine  partnership, 
and  flowing  out  of  it,  a  calm  and  serene  confidence  that 
He  who  was  working  in  and  through  Him,  would  bring 
Him,  let  wrhat  might  delay  or  hinder,  to  the  hour  when, 
His  task  complete,  His  task  all  done  and  ended,  He  could 
say,  'I  have  finished  the  work  \vhich  thou  gavest  me  to 
do.'"  "We,  too,"  he  added,  "may  not  fear  to  say,  'My 
Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I  work.  His  lamp  shines 
through  my  reserve.  His  compassion  stirs  my  pity.  His 
courage  nerves  my  will.  My  task,  my  work,  do  I  call  it? 
Xay,  it  is  His  more  than  it  is  mine.  He  and  He  only  can 
make  me  know  the  meaning  of  the  words,  'I  can  do  all 
things  through  Christ  which  strengtheneth  me,'  and  He 
has  given  me  'an  Exemplar  that  I  should  follow  His  steps." 
In  this  address,  spoken  five  weeks  after  his  consecration, 
the  Bishop  revealed  the  spirit  in  which  he  was  entering 
upon  his  work.  The  conditions  of  the  conference  were 
intimate  and  informal,  and  he  responded  to  them.  He  said 
plainly  what  was  in  his  heart. 

Reviewing  the  work  of  the  year  in  his  first  Convention 
Address,  lie  spoke  of  these  conferences.     "It   is  proper," 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE   EPISCOPATE  133 

he  said,  "that  I  should  make  record  here  that,  during  the 
past  winter  and  spring,  I  have  conducted  a  series  of  ser- 
vices, held  in  some  five  or  six  churches  and  chapels  in  this 
city,  for  women  engaged  in  church  work,  to  whom  I  de- 
livered a  series  of  addresses  on  subjects  related  to  their 
work  and  its  spiritual  needs.  The  very  large  attendance 
upon  these  services,  of  persons  from  without  as  well  as 
within  the  diocese,  indicated  how  general  is  the  interest 
in  women's  work  which  exists  among  us,  and  how  great  is 
the  wisdom  of  those  who  are  giving  themselves  more  or 
less  wholly  to  it.  We  have  to  thank  God  for  those  who, 
whether  in  sisterhoods  such  as  exist  in  this  diocese,  or  as 
deaconesses,  have  recognized  a  divine  calling  of  service, 
and  have  altogether  surrendered  themselves  to  it,  but 
we  may  well  recognize,  at  the  same  time,  the  vocation  of 
that  still  larger  number  who  while  bound  by  domestic  ties 
to  duties  from  which  they  may  not  wholly  withdraw,  are 
yet  moved  to  give  themselves  to  the  service  of  the  Church 
and  her  Lord  in  acts  of  mercy  and  love.  For  both  these 
classes  some  more  definite  and  explicit  instruction  has  long 
been  needed,  and  in  initiating  the  service  which  I  have 
this  day  reported  to  you,  it  is  my  hope  that  we  have  but 
begun  a  series  of  such  instructions  to  be  continued  from 
year  to  year,  and  in  which  I  trust  I  may  have  the  help 
of  my  brethren  of  the  reverend  clergy  and  others." 

Twice  during  the  year,  in  March,  the  Assistant  Bishop 
met  the  clergy  of  the  diocese  in  the  Chantry  of  Grace 
Church  for  a  devotional  service,  consisting  of  the  Holy 
Communion  and  a  brief  address.  These  meetings,  he  said 
in  his  Convention  Address,  "witnessed  to  a  want  which 
many  of  us  who  are  in  the  ministry  are  feeling  more  and 
more  profoundly.  Dear  brethren  of  the  laity,  when  you 
complain  that  the  clergy,  whether  at  the  altar  or  in  the 
pulpit,  do  not  greatly  edify  you,  do  you  realize  how  con- 
stant and  how  exhausting  is  the  draught  upon  both  their 
spiritual  and  their  intellectual  resources,  and  how  few 
and  scanty,  in  most  cases,  are  the  means  at  their  com- 


134  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

mand  for  reenforcing  them  ?  A  priest  or  deacon  in  a  great 
city,  driven  by  claims  which  cover  the  whole  domain  of 
life  and  include  exacting  interests,  secular  as  well  as  sacred, 
or  a  country  pastor  chilled  by  isolation  and  disheartened 
by  the  difficulties  of  maintaining  an  edifying  worship  no 
less  than  the  question  of  personal  support,  are  hardly  in  a 
position  to  sustain  a  high  level  of  spiritual  enthusiasm, 
without  some  special  help  to  doing  so."  He  advocated  the 
holding  of  "retreats"  and  " quiet  days,"  calling  them  if 
necessary  by  some  other  name  which  "may  not  give  alarm 
to  timorous  souls." 

In  June,  he  delivered  the  Annual  Address,  on  "The  Place 
of  the  Scholar  in  American  Life,"  at  the  Commencement 
of  the  University  of  Michigan.  In  the  same  month  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  was  conferred  upon  him  by 
Trinity  College.  Union  College  had  already  made  him  a 
Doctor  of  Laws  (1877). 

In  September,  in  his  address  to  the  Diocesan  Conven- 
tion, he  suggested  the  consideration  of  plans  for  church 
extension,  in  city  and  country,  suggesting  the  appoint- 
ment of  archdeacons  or  rural  deans,  again  with  deference 
to  the  "timorous  souls"  who  are  sensitive  to  the  possible 
significance  of  names.  "I  beseech  you,  brethren,"  he  con- 
cluded, "add  your  prayer  to  mine  for  all  the  faithful;  for 
the  good  estate  of  the  Catholic  Church,  especially  that  por- 
tion of  it  in  this  diocese ;  for  its  bishop,  venerable  and 
beloved,  who,  though  still  spared  to  us,  rests  from  his 
labors  ;  and  for  him  who  has  so  long  detained  you,  that 
he  may  have  given  to  him  the  strength  and  wisdom  and 
meekness  which  he  so  greatly  needs." 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   PIGEONHOLING   OF  HERESY 

1884 

IN  the  middle  of  January,  1884,  a  somewhat  difficult 
question  was  presented  to  the  Assistant  Bishop  for  settle- 
ment in  connection  with  the  instructions  which  were  being 
given  in  All  Souls  Church  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  R.  Heber  Newton. 
He  had  preached  a  course  of  sermons  out  of  which  he  had 
made  a  book  on  The  Right  and  Wrong  Uses  of  the  Bible, 
and  his  people  had  asked  him  to  apply  the  principles  therein 
stated  to  the  detailed  understanding  of  the  Old  Testament. 
This  he  had  begun  to  do  on  Sunday  afternoons. 

Dr.  Newton's  teachings  had  already  disturbed  the  minds 
of  some  of  his  conservative  brethren.  On  April  25,  1883, 
Dr.  Samuel  Buel  and  Dr.  B.  F.  Da  Costa  had  made  to 
Bishop  Horatio  Potter  a  formal  presentment  charging 
Dr.  Newton  with  "several  grave  offences  against  the  Canons 
of  the  Church  and  against  his  ordination  vows  and  promises." 
The  Bishop  had  "promised  attention  to  it  when  certain 
matters  requiring  his  immediate  attention  had  been  de- 
spatched." The  presenters,  however,  had  waited  in  vain 
for  any  further  action. 

Thus  the  matter  stood  when  the  rector  of  All  Souls  began 
his  further  elucidation  of  the  higher  cricitism.  "My  plan," 
he  said  afterward,  "contemplated  the  covering  of  the 
Pentateuch  during  the  winter,  in  a  series  of  lectures  which 
in  the  traditional  liberty  of  the  Episcopal  Church  should 
give  a  plain  and  popular  account  of  the  nature  and  con- 
tents of  these  five  books,  in  the  light  of  the  new  criticism." 
Thus  he  dealt  with  the  composite  structure  and  author- 

135 


136  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

ship  of  the  Pentateuch,  with  the  "primeval  sagas,"  and 
with  the  "traditions"  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob  and  Joseph. 

So  much  has  been  said  on  these  matters  since  that  time, 
and  so  many  of  the  propositions  which  then  appeared  de- 
structive have  been  quietly  accepted  by  conservative 
persons,  that  Dr.  Newton's  lectures,  read  in  the  light  of 
the  present  day,  seem  harmless  enough.  They  were  not 
so  accepted,  however,  by  his  neighbors.  Historical  criti- 
cism was  little  known  in  this  country.  Scholars  were  aware 
of  it,  but  congregations  had  not  been  much  informed  about 
it.  Dr.  Newton  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  its  populariza- 
tion, and  he  encountered  some  of  the  natural  inconven- 
iences of  that  position.  Even  as  late  as  1884,  new  ideas 
were  under  suspicion,  especially  in  religion.  The  reporters 
put  the  lectures  in  the  Monday  morning  newspapers,  giv- 
ing considerable  space  to  whatever  looked  to  them  like 
heresy,  and  less  space,  or  none  at  all,  to  what  the  lectures 
said  by  way  of  piety.  In  this  form  the  instructions  were 
"doctrinally  unsatisfactory  to  very  many  churchmen," 
and  they  expressed  themselves  on  the  matter  with  much 
freedom. 

The  Assistant  Bishop,  a  low  churchman  by  inheritance, 
was  a  broad  churchman  by  temperament.  He  was  dis- 
inclined to  impede  the  pursuit  of  truth  by  ecclesiastical 
limitations.  Already,  in  1873,  in  an  introduction  which 
he  wrote  for  an  American  edition  of  J.  Llewelyn  Davies's 
"Theology  and  Morality,"  he  had  quoted  with  approval  the 
lines  of  Dean  Alford  : 

"  Speak  thou  the  truth.     Let  others  fence 

And  trim  their  words  for  pay  ; 
In  pleasant  sunshine  of  pretence 

Let  others  bask  their  day. 
Guard  thou  the  fact." 

Dr.  Potter,  in  his  introduction,  had  indeed  cautiously 
remarked  that  "very  few  persons  will  agree  with  Mr. 
Davies  in  everything  that  he  has  to  say  ;"  but  Dr.  Newton 
certainly  scored  a  point  when  on  a  fly  leaf  of  his  published 


THE   PIGEONHOLING   OF   HERESY  137 

lectures  he  printed  a  paragraph  from  the  book  which  Dr. 
Potter  had  introduced  to  American  readers.  "It  was  the 
design  of  God,"  said  the  author,  "that  the  world  should 
be  governed  by  the  spirit,  and  not  by  texts.  The  sacred 
volume  is  therefore  exhibited  in  the  face  of  the  world, 
to  the  incredulous  dismay  of  the  general  multitude  of 
Christians,  as  not  wholly  trustworthy.  The  Christian 
will  no  longer  be  able  to  avail  himself  of  the  short  and 
easy  method  of  the  syllogism,  'All  that  is  in  the  Bible 
is  true ;  this  is  the  Bible,  therefore  it  is  true.'  But  the 
loss  ought  to  be  a  great  gain.  The  word  of  God  inter- 
preted by  history  and  life  is  a  grander  object  of  faith  than 
even  the  Bible." 

The  responsibility  of  a  bishop,  however,  differs  some- 
what from  that  of  a  parish  priest.  He  is  indeed,  as  Bishop 
Williams  had  said  in  the  consecration  sermon,  to  "give 
attendance  to  reading"  and  to  be  a  champion  of  the  truth, 
but  he  is  at  the  same  time  to  keep  the  peace.  The  Assistant 
Bishop  found  the  peace  disturbed  by  Dr.  Newton's  lec- 
tures. It  seemed  to  him  that  the  truth  itself  would  be 
best  advanced  by  the  exercise  of  patience.  Without  deny- 
ing that  the  right  reading  of  the  Pentateuch  was  a  subject 
of  interest  and  of  some  importance,  he  felt  that  Dr.  New- 
ton, by  the  fault  perhaps  of  the  unprepared  public  rather 
than  by  the  fault  of  his  own  matter  or  manner,  was  dis- 
torting the  perspective  and  introducing  an  unnecessary 
confusion.  He  therefore  informally  requested  the  lecturer 
to  discontinue  his  lectures. 

•  "In  our  brief  interview  the  other  day,"  said  the  Assistant 
Bishop  (January  10,  1884),  "you  gave  me  an  assurance 
which  was,  I  am  sure,  as  sincere  on  your  part  as  it  was 
unsolicited  on  mine.  May  I  venture  to  recall  it  to  you? 
You  know,  as  well  as  I,  that  in  the  matter  of  your  course 
of  Sunday  afternoon  sermons  I  have  no  power  to  silence 
you  by  any  act  or  injunction  which  is  merely  my  own  ; 
and  you  know  also  how  thoroughly  persuaded  I  am  that 
you  are  animated  in  all  that  you  have  said  and  done  in 


138  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

your  ministry  by  a  sincere  desire  to  serve  and  help  your 
fellowmen.  But  I  am  no  less  persuaded  that  the  influence 
of  what  you  are  now  doing  on  Sunday  afternoons  is  not 
such  as  you  yourself  would  wish,  and  that  its  results  are 
both  painful  and  harmful  to  an  extent  of  which  you  have 
no  knowledge. 

"And  so  I  ask  you  to  stop,  and  remind  you  of  your  prom- 
ise to  do  so.  I  do  not  approach  you  in  any  attitude  of 
authority ;  it  is  doubtful  whether  in  view  of  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  your  own  position  and  mine,  I  have  any 
right  to  do  so.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I  have  the  best  reason 
for  believing  that  you  will  heed  this  request  of  mine,  and 
I  will  only  add  that  if  you  need  a  reason  to  give  your  people 
for  doing  so,  you  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  say  that  I  have 
made  it." 

Dr.  Newton  replied,  "Yours  of  the  tenth  is  before  me. 
I  could  not  refuse  to  heed  your  request,  so  delicately  made ; 
and  I  am  doubly  bound  by  my  assurance  to  you  that  your 
sense  of  expediency  would  guide  me  in  this  matter.  But 
I  am  frank  to  say  that  had  I  foreseen  the  renewal  of  the 
brutal  attacks  on  my  honor  already  made  by  one  fellow 
presbyter  in  the  public  print,  and  evidently  to  be  followed 
by  others,  I  should  not  have  promised  as  I  did.  Fearing 
that  there  might  be  a  renewal  of  last  year's  agitation  I 
was  ready  to  stop  my  course  rather  than  embroil  you  in 
any  trouble.  Since  Monday  the  face  of  things  has  so  far 
changed  that  I  foresee  the  reproach  that  I  shall  incur  by 
this  action.  None  the  less  I  shall  obey  your  wish.  In 
the  changed  circumstances  I  shall  avail  myself  of  your 
permission  to  use  your  request  as  my  reason  for  stopping 
-for  nothing  else  would  stop  me  now.  You  say  'to  my 
people.'  It  will,  however,  go  of  course  to  the  press,  as  I 
suppose  you  know,  but  as  I  feel  I  ought  to  remind  you. 
Failing  to  hear  from  you  by  Sunday,  I  shall  understand 
that  you  accept  this  responsibility."  He  signed  the  letter, 
"Yours  in  a  loyalty  that  this  may  show  you,  perhaps." 

No  further  word  arriving,   Dr.   Newton  on  the  Sunday 


THE   PIGEONHOLING   OF   HERESY  139 

following  announced  to  his  people  the  conclusion  of  his 
course  of  lectures.  "The  Assistant  Bishop  of  our  diocese/' 
he  said,  "has  asked  me  to  stop  my  Sunday  afternoon  course 
of  Bible  lectures.  He  disclaims  'any  attitude  of  authority/ 
owning  that  his  right  to  inhibit  my  teachings  is  at  least 
doubtful.  A  claim  of  episcopal  authority  to  silence  me  by 
official  right  would  have  thrown  me  back  upon  the  prin- 
ciple of  'the  liberty  of  prophesying.7  A  request  thus  made 
by  my  ecclesiastical  superior  and  my  personal  friend  ap- 
peals to  my  loyalty.  He  knows  the  condition  of  his  diocese, 
and  he  would  not  have  made  such  a  request  had  he  not 
felt  it  wise.  His  own  sympathies  with  mental  freedom  and 
honest  utterance  are  so  well  known  that  such  a  request 
becomes  doubly  imperative.  His  task  in  guiding  our 
church  is  a  delicate  one  that  I  would  not  willfully  make 
more  embarrassing.  While  I  know  of  another  side  to  my 
teachings  than  that  which  has  doubtless  been  thrust  before 
him,  I  cannot  but  defer  to  his  judgment  and  accede  to  his 
wish.  I  shall  therefore  suspend  my  course  of  Bible  lectures. 
"In  commencing  it  I  simply  complied  with  repeated 
requests.  I  meant  to  help  the  intelligent  study  of  the 
Old  Testament  on  the  part  of  those  whose  faith  in  the 
revelation  there  recorded  rests  on  something  deeper  than 
a  superstitious  credulity.  I  regret  that  your  meat  proves 
other  people's  poison.  Nothing  has  been  said  here  that 
is  not  an  old  story  to  Biblical  scholars,  and  all  that  has 
been  said,  as  you  know,  has  been  in  the  profoundest  rever- 
ence for  the  real  spiritual  revelation,  which  came  to  man- 
kind through  the  historic  growth  of  the  'people  of  religion.' 
Whatever  has  been  said  has  been  with  a  view  to  aiding  you 
in  disentangling  the  overgrowth  of  legend  and  myth  in 
the  Old  Testament  tradition  from  this  inner  body  of  truth ; 
that  thus  you  might  read  these  venerable  sagas  of  Genesis, 
which  alone  we  have  covered,  without  affronting  your 
reason  or  your  conscience  by  trying  to  make  science  out  of 
its  myths,  or  history  out  of  its  legends,  while  you  listen 
the  more  needfully  to  their  spiritual  truths.  You  must 


140  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

do  without  this  help  for  the  Pentateuch  for  the  present, 
because  other  people,  untrained  in  a  rational  reverence, 
find  themselves  now  pained  in  trying  to  think  out  the  real 
meaning  of  these  traditions.  You  who  are  strong  must, 
as  of  old  the  Apostle  charged,  bear  the  burdens  of  the  weak. 

"If  harm  has  been  done  to  any  soul  I  am  profoundly 
sorry.  I  am  none  the  less  convinced  that  such  harm  must 
needs  be  risked  now  to  escape  the  worse  harm  following 
the  silence  of  the  pulpit  on  such  subjects.  The  intelligence 
of  the  age  is  increasingly  drifting  away  from  the  churches 
because  of  that  silence,  or  of  what  is  worse,  the  continued 
utterance  of  outworn  conceptions.  In  every  birth  age  of 
a  new  thought  of  religion  harm  has  been  done  by  those 
who  squared  to  the  new  light.  Christianity  did  such  harm 
in  its  dawn,  and  its  apostles  were  'infidels'  and  'atheists.' 
The  Reformation  did  such  harm,  and  the  men  whom  we 
are  now  honoring  were  charged  by  the  priests  of  their 
day  with  destroying  faith  and  opening  the  floodgates  of 
moral  disorder.  Only  thus  does  the  needful  higher  thought 
come  in  and  gather  reverence  and  sanctity  around  it. 

"I  confess  that  it  is  hard  for  me  to  comply  with  my 
Bishop's  wish,  now  that  the  fire  of  abuse  has  opened  again 
upon  me,  and  that  my  fellow  presbyters  have  not  scrupled 
in  the  public  press  to  charge  me  in  contemptuous  terms 
with  conscious  dishonesty  and  insanity,  and  to  demand 
my  instant  expulsion  from  the  church.  Personally,  while 
never  courting  such  an  ordeal,  I  have  never  shrunk  from 
facing  the  issue  threatened  me  for  exercising  the  freedom 
of  teaching,  which  is  the  heritage  of  our  church ;  but  I 
have  no  right  to  compromise  other  interests  just  now 
perhaps  of  greater  importance  to  our  church,  nor  have  I 
the  heart  to  lay  a  burden  on  the  mind  of  our  venerable 
Bishop.  Could  I  have  foreseen  a  renewal  of  the  unreason- 
able panic  of  last  winter,  I  should  not  have  begun  these 
parish  'talks.'  I  had  too  much  trust,  it  seems,  in  the 
sober  second  thought  of  a  portion  of  our  church.  Since 
those  who  reprobate  my  views  arc  not  willing  to  accord 


THE   PIGEONHOLING   OF   HERESY  141 

me  the  liberty  which  some  of  them  claim  in  other  directions, 
I  must  choose  between  my  rights  and  the  church's  peace 
—  and,  as  heretofore,  I  choose  peace." 

He  proceeded,  however,  to  publish  the  lectures.  "The 
singular  position,"  he  said,  "in  which  I  was  then  put  made 
it  seem  due,  alike  to  my  people  and  myself,  that  the  public 
should  be  enabled  to  judge  of  the  real  nature  of  the  lectures, 
which  had  called  forth  such  a  very  unusual,  if  not  un- 
precedented, episcopal  interruption  of  a  presbyter  in  the 
course  of  his  parochial  ministrations."  And  he  ended  his 
preface  with  the  expression  of  a  hope  that  "the  time  may 
soon  come  when  the  growth  of  a  manly  spirit  of  free  enquiry 
among  the  clergy,  and  the  spread  of  an  intelligent  con- 
ception of  the  Bible  through  the  laity  shall  make  it  no 
longer  needful  for  a  bishop  to  stay  a  disreputable  panic 
in  the  Episcopal  Church  by  asking  for  silence  from  a  pres- 
byter who  may  be  seeking,  in  whatever  imperfect  way, 
to  lead  men  into  a  rationally  reverent  view  of  the  Scrip- 
tures." 

The  Bishop's  action  commended  itself  to  the  general 
mind.  "The  growing  disposition  of  our  bishops  to 
'govern,'"  wrote  Dr.  John  Vaughan  Lewis,  "and  the 
growing  determination  of  our  presbyters  to  call  their  souls 
their  own,  is  leading  on  to  a  conflict  in  which  the  bishops 
will  inevitably  go  to  the  wall,  unless  they  adopt  your  tactics. 
I  have  no  sympathy  with  Newton's  exegesis,  but  I  have 
great  sympathy  with  his  'liberty  of  prophesying,'  of  which 
he  seems  so  tenacious.  I  think  your  shot  took  him  ex- 
actly between  wind  and  water,  and  sunk  his  craft  in  shallow 
groundings  where  there  will  be  no  lives  lost.  It  seems  to 
me  that  that  sort  of  wisdom  appertaineth  to  the  office  of 
a  bishop  in  the  Church  of  God  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  I  am  more  glad  than  before  that 
you  were  consecrated." 

But  complaints  continued.  "Yesterday,"  says  a  corre- 
spondent, "I  met  the  president  of  one  of  our  banks,  a  devout 
Christian  man,  and  of  wide  range  of  intercourse  constantly 


142  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

with  the  strong  men  of  our  community.  He  asked,  'What 
is  the  church  to  do  with  the  rector  of  the  parish  which  is 
forced  to  listen  to  his  persevering  tirades  against  the  Scrip- 
tures? We  men  want  to  live  above  the  things  that  are 
troubling  and  tempting  us  and  have  found  our  help  chiefly 
in  the  Scriptures  and  the  church-teaching  founded  thereon, 
and  here  is  one  of  our  ministers  week  by  week  jerking  us 
down  from  our  foothold,  and  destroying  the  credit  of  the 
documents  where  only  we  can  find  any  reliable  evidence 
of  the  existence  of  a  God.  ...  Is  there  no  way  to  stop 
this  mischief  and  disgrace?'  The  bank  president  is 
further  quoted  as  complaining  that  Dr.  Newton  is  un- 
doing his  expectation  of  acquaintance  with  Abraham, 
Isaac  and  Jacob  in  the  world  to  come ;  and  as  saying  that 
he  has  always  found  it  good  for  him  to  believe  the  story  of 
Joseph,  and  that  even  if  it  is  not  true  he  does  not  wish  to 
be  told  so. 

The  previous  presenters  took  the  matter  up  again. 

Dr.  Da  Costa  said  (January  15,  1884)  :  "After  my  visit 
to  you  last  week  I  felt  almost  sure  that  my  connection 
with  the  unfortunate  affair  which  led  to  the  interview 
was  at  an  end.  I  hope  even  now  that  such  is  the  case, 
or  that  it  may  be  soon.  I  should  never  have  been  known 
as  one  of  the  presenters  if  other  persons  differently  situated 
and  more  capable  of  making  the  movement  a  success  had 
not  been  intimidated  by  the  prospect  of  losing  the  good 
opinion  of  influential  parties,  and  weakly  left  me  alone 
to  go  on  as  best  I  could.  Then,  as  I  explained  to  you,  I 
was  not  allowed  to  let  the  matter  drop  on  the  simple  con- 
dition which  you  conceded  was  fair  and  just,  nor  indeed 
upon  any  condition  at  all.  I  beg  to  offer  this  brief  state- 
ment that  you  may  not  misunderstand  my  motive  in  making 
the  request  which  I  venture  to  present. 

"But,  not  to  delay,  I  wish  to  ask,  as  a  presbyter  of  the 
diocese,  —  that  is,  if  you  consider  the  question  a  proper 
OIK;,  and  feel  wholly  at  liberty  to  reply,  —  whether  gov- 
ernment of  the  diocese  is  now  in  your  hands  in  such  a 


THE   PIGEONHOLING   OF   HERESY  143 

way  as  would  enable  you  to  act  independently  of  the  Senior 
Bishop  in  any  matter  brought  before  you.  Hitherto,  I 
have  understood  distinctly  that  such  was  not  the  case. 

"I  ask  not  only  for  the  reason  that  I  desire  personally 
to  have  done  with  all  complications  connected  with  dis- 
cipline, but  on  account  of  others  with  whom  I  am,  in  a 
sense,  connected,  and  who,  in  the  absence  of  knowledge, 
are  liable  to  make  mistakes  that  may  prove  unfortunate 
for  us  all." 

The  formal  presentment  was  renewed.  Dr.  Buel  and 
Dr.  Da  Costa  signed  a  letter  (March  6,  1884),  in  which 
after  reviewing  their  application  to  the  Senior  Bishop, 
they  said,  "Under  the  canon  the  bishop  could  do  only  one 
of  three  things  specified  in  the  canon.  1.  'If  the  facts 
charged  shall  not  appear  to  him  to  be  such  as  constitute 
an  offence,'  he  'may  dismiss  it/  that  is,  the  presentment. 
Or  2.  'If  it  allege  facts  some  of  which  do,  and  some  of  which 
do  not  constitute  an  offence,  he  may  allow  it  in  part  and 
dismiss  the  residue.'  Or  3.  'He  may  permit  it  to  be 
amended.'  'When  it  shall  be  allowed  in  whole  or  in  part/ 
the  Bishop  'shall'  proceed,  in  sending  the  case  to'  trial, 
in  the  manner  subsequently  directed  in  the  canon. 

"Under  these  circumstances  we  had  every  reason  to 
think  that  the  case  in  whole  or  in  part,  or  in  amended 
form,  would  be  sent  to  trial,  and  that  one  of  us  would 
have  been  notified  as  the  canon  directs.  If  it  were  dis- 
missed, it  could  only  be  on  the  ground  specified  in  the 
canon  that  'the  facts  charged  did  not  appear  to  the  Bishop  to 
be  such  as  constitute  an  offence.'  Of  any  such  dismissal  we 
have  not  had  the  slightest  intimation,  and  no  word  from 
the  Bishop  on  the  whole  subject  or  on  any  part  of  it. 

"We  therefore  respectfully  ask  you,  Right  Rev.  Bishop, 
that  you  would  kindly  inform  us  whether  the  case  has 
been  dismissed  according  to  the  canon,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  ground  specified  in  the  canon,  or,  if  this  is  not 
the  case,  whether  any  judicial  examination  of  this  painful 
subject  is  to  be  ordered." 


144  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

This   communication  the  Assistant  Bishop  quietly  filed 
away  in  its  appropriate  pigeonhole. 

Dr.  Buel  (in  1886)  returned  to  the  attack.  He  quoted 
many  sentences  from  a  recently  published  sermon  to  show 
that  Dr.  Newton  was  more  offensively  and  dangerously 
heretical  than  ever.  "The  sermon/'  he  said,  "is  a  rejec- 
tion of  our  common  Christianity,  as  it  is  held  universally 
in  our  church,  and  as  we  have  received  it  from  the  church 
before  us.  My  dear  bishop,  can  such  things  be?  There 
is  a  time  for  deliberation  and  there  is  a  time  for  action,  and 
when  such  a  time  has  clearly  and  fully  come,  the  world 
and  the  church  will  look,  and  have  a  right  to  look,  for 
action.  Our  canons  (Canon  XVI,  sec.  1)  provide  for  the 
examination  of  such  a  case,  and  if  the  examiners  are  of 
'opinion'  that  there  is  ' sufficient  ground  for  presentment' 
the  examiners  are  directed  to  '  present  the  clergyman 
accordingly.'  That  you  may  be  rightly  directed  in  this 
most  important  matter,  affecting  all  the  clergy  and  candi- 
dates for  orders,  affecting  too  the  estimate  of  the  sincerity 
of  the  church  in  the  issue  of  her  doctrine,  discipline  and 
worship,  is  my  earnest  prayer." 

This  prayer  seems  to  have  been  answered.  Bishop 
Potter  took  no  action ;  the  teachings  in  question,  whether 
wise  or  unwise,  were  not  given  the  advertisement  of  a  trial ; 
truth  and  error,  in  Bacon's  phrase,  were  left  to  "grapple" 
without  episcopal  assistance  on  the  one  side  or  the  other ; 
and  the  faith  suffered  no  harm.  Peace  prevailed.  Other 
matters  engaged  both  popular  and  clerical  attention. 

The  case  of  Dr.  Newton  appeared  again,  in  1891,  when 
twelve  New  York  clergymen  formally  appealed  to  the 
Bishop  to  appoint  persons,  according  to  the  provisions 
of  the  canon,  to  ascertain  the  truth  concerning  the  public 
rumors  respecting  his  teaching.  Dr.  Newton  himself 
very  earnestly  seconded  this  request.  Worse  even  than 
trials  for  heresy,  he  said,  is  the  "free  resort  to  extra  legal 
means  in  order  to  work  up  the  religious  rancor  under  which 
a  presbyter  is  tried  and  condemned  without  a  hearing 


THE    PIGEONHOLING   OF   HERESY  145 

before  a  judge  or  jury."     This  he  characterized  as  a  kind 
of  "ecclesiastical  lynching." 

But  again  the  Bishop  exercised  his  discretionary  power 
in  the  matter  by  quietly  filing  the  new  papers  with  the 
old  ones.  There  they  innocuously  remained.  And  Dr. 
Newton  continued  in  good  standing  in  the  Church  to  his 
life's  end. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS 

1884-1885 

THE  interest  of  Dr.  Potter  in  the  work  of  women  in 
the  church  indicated  the  probability  of  his  cordial  en- 
couragement of  the  sisterhoods  already  existing  in  the 
diocese.  One  of  these,  the  Sisterhood  of  St.  John  Baptist, 
had  recently  become  an  American  society,  still  related  to 
the  parent  house  at  Clewer  in  England,  but  practically 
independent  of  it.  Dr.  Houghton,  of  the  Church  of  the 
Transfiguration,  had  thus  become  the  Warden,  and  the 
Sisters  looked  to  the  Assistant  Bishop  of  New  York  to 
give  them  such  counsel  and  service  as  was  given  at  Clewer 
by  the  Bishop  of  Oxford.  Thus  in  October,  1884,  Dr. 
Houghton  wrote  to  Bishop  Potter  asking  him  to  use  the 
customary  " Service  of  Blessing"  on  the  occasion  of  the 
reelection  of  the  Mother  Superior,  and  to  receive  the  pro- 
fession of  two  sisters.  A  like  matter  presently  appeared 
in  another  form  in  a  request  to  "profess"  a  member  of  the 
Order  of  the  Holy  Cross. 

The  Order  of  the  Holy  Cross  had  its  origin  in  the  mind 
of  Rev.  James  Otis  Sargent  Huntington,  a  son  of  the  Bishop 
of  Central  Xcw  York.  Graduating  from  Harvard,  he  had 
returned  to  Syracuse  to  undertake  the  duties  of  his  diaconate 
under  his  father's  direction  in  the  charge  of  St.  Andrew's 
Mission.  About  that  time,  Canon  Knox-Little  being  in 
this  country  and  conducting  a  three-days'  Retreat  in  St. 
Clement's  Church,  Philadelphia,  Huntington  went  down 
to  attend  it,  partly  from  motives  of  devotion,  partly  from 
motives  of  curiosity.  In  the  progress  of  these  services  he 


THE   ORDER   OF  THE   HOLY   CROSS  147 

felt  himself  called  to  the  "religious"  life.  Another  like- 
minded  young  clergyman  was  entering  at  the  same  time 
into  a  similar  experience.  Rev.  Robert  S.  Dod  was  curate 
to  the  German  priest  at  the  Mission  of  the  Holy  Cross  in 
the  city  of  New  York.  After  the  Retreat;  on  the  way 
from  Philadelphia  to  New  York,  the  two  conferred  to- 
gether. There  was  already  a  Brotherhood  in  this  country, 
the  Order  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist,  but  it  was  an  English 
society,  having  its  headquarters  at  Cowley,  Oxford.  Who- 
ever would  join  it  must  serve  his  noviate  and  make  his 
profession  in  England,  and  be  under  the  direction  of  an 
English  Superior.  The  young  men  proposed  to  themselves 
an  independent  American  fraternity. 

In  September,  1881,  Mr.  Huntington  went  to  New  York 
to  join  Dod  in  an  attempt  at  community  life,  and  the  two 
were  joined  a  month  later  by  the  Rev.  James  G.  Cameron, 
a  young  priest  who  had  been  working  among  the  Indians 
of  the  Onondaga  Reservation  near  Syracuse.  In  the  inter- 
vals of  their  zealous  labors  among  the  East  Side  poor,  they 
compared  their  ideals  and  made  their  plans.  They  effected 
an  organization  among  themselves  and  adopted  a  rule  of 
life.  All  this  they  submitted  to  Bishop  Horatio  Potter, 
and  received  his  approval.  Mr.  Dod,  writing  to  the  As- 
sistant Bishop  in  March,  1884,  acknowledging  a  contribu- 
tion to  their  work,  said,  "I  think  it  will  please  you  to  know 
that  Bishop  Huntington  also  gives  us  his  hearty  approval 
after  having  read  our  constitution  and  rule,  as  well  as 
observing  our  methods  of  work";  but  added,  frankly,  "I 
do  not  mean  that  he  quite  endorses  as  advisable  all  the 
details  of  our  life,  but  finds  nothing  of  which  he  strongly 
disapproves."  "There  is  nothing  secret,"  said  Mr.  Dod, 
"about  our  life  or  work,  but  of  course  that  part  of  it  which 
pertains  to  our  private  life  and  devotion  we  have  sought 
to  keep  to  ourselves  as  something  too  sacred  to  be  laid  open 
to  every  one's  idle  curiosity ;  but  to  you  or  to  any  one, 
when  there  is  any  reason  for  it,  we  are  quite  ready  to  make 
it  known."  "It  would  be  a  great  pleasure,"  he  added, 


148  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

"and  a  help  to  us,  to  feel  that  you  know  all  about  it,  and 
thoroughly  understood  what  we  were  looking  forward  to 
and  endeavoring,  by  God's  help,  to  carry  out." 

It  was  found  eventually  that  Mr.  Dod,  on  account  of 
persistent  asthma,  would  be  unable  to  live  in  New  York. 
It  was  found  also  that  Mr.  Cameron  was  of  another  mind 
from  Mr.  Huntington  as  to  the  nature  of  the  vows  which 
should  be  assumed.  When  therefore  the  time  came  for 
the  actual  profession  of  novices,  Mr.  Huntington  alone 
was  ready.  This  was  the  situation  when  the  Order  of  the 
Holy  Cross  came  formally  into  existence  on  November  25, 
1884. 

At  the  service  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Holy  Cross,  the  bishops 
of  Central  New  York  and  Tennessee  were  present.  Bishop 
Potter  received  the  profession. 

"I  desire,"  said  the  novice,  "for  love  of  Jesus,  to  devote 
myself  body,  soul  and  spirit  to  the  service  of  Almighty  God 
in  the  religious  life  as  a  member  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy 
Cross,  and  to  that  end  to  take  upon  me  of  my  own  free 
will  the  vows  of  religious  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience." 

"Bishop.  Do  you  solemnly  and  forever  surrender  all 
that  you  possess,  or  of  which  you  may  hereafter  become 
possessed,  even  to  the  least  article  of  personal  use  or  en- 
joyment, in  accordance  with  the  vow  of  religious  poverty?" 

"Novice.  I  do. 

" Bishop.  Will  you  diligently  serve  God  for  the  remainder 
of  your  life  in  the  virgin  state,  striving  to  follow  the  example 
of  the  perfect  purity  of  our  virgin  Lord  in  all  your  thoughts, 
words  and  deeds,  as  the  vow  of  religious  chastity  demands? 

"Novice.  I  will,  the  Lord  being  my  helper. 

"Bishop.  Will  you  shape  your  life  in  accordance  with 
the  Rule  of  Life  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy  Cross,  and  will 
you  give  respectful  obedience  to  all  lawful  commands  of 
your  superior,  and  to  the  decisions  of  the  chapter,  sub- 
mitting your  own  will  to  their  godly  directions  and  ad- 
ministrations, under  the  vow  of  religious  obedience? 

"Novice.  I  will,  by  the  help  of  God. 


THE   ORDER   OF   THE   HOLY   CROSS  149 

"Bishop.  Almighty  God,  who  hath  given  you  this  will 
to  do  all  those  things,  grant  you  also  strength  and  power 
to  fulfil  the  same,  that  He  may  accomplish  the  work  which 
He  hath  begun  in  you,  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 

The  Churchman  for  December  6,  gave  an  account  of  the 
ceremony,  among  other  paragraphs  of  current  interest 
concerning  the  diocese  of  New  York,  and  published  an 
editorial  under  the  title,  "Unmarried  Clergy."  This  brief 
editorial,  in  the  mild  manner  which  was  then  characteristic 
of  that  journal,  made  no  reference  to  the  Order  of  the  Holy 
Cross,  but  observed  that  "it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the 
church  has  need  of  unmarried  men  to  do  her  work  in  many 
places,"  and  observed  further,  "but  this  does  not  say  that 
all  clergymen  should  remain  unmarried.  Still  less  does  it 
mean  that  the  unmarried  state  is  more  religious  or  more  to 
be  commended  than  the  married." 

In  the  issue  of  December  13,  among  "Letters  to  the 
Editor"  appeared  the  first  word  of  alarm.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
Samuel  Benedict  of  Cincinnati  desired  an  answer  to  the 
question :  "Are  we,  in  our  branch  of  the  church,  at  liberty 
to  impose  the  threefold  vow  of  poverty,  chastity  and 
obedience,  such  as  was  done  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Holy 
Cross  by  the  Assistant  Bishop  of  New  York,  on  the  25th 
of  November,  in  the  midst  of  a  most  solemn  service  during 
the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion?"  "Nothing  for 
years  has  so  startled  me,"  he  said. 

Two  weeks  later,  December  27,  Rev.  R.  G.  Wilson,  of 
St.  Luke's,  Troy,  applauded  the  Assistant  Bishop.  Mis- 
taking, as  many  did,  the  real  intention  of  the  Order,  and 
thinking  that  its  purpose  was  mainly  the  service  of  the 
very  poor,  he  dwelt  upon  the  need  of  unmarried  clergy  for 
that  work ;  the  parson  should  live  among  his  people ; 
such  a  neighborhood  as  Seventh  Street  and  Avenue  C  was 
no  place  to  which  to  bring  a  wife  and  children.  But  Rev. 
Robert  Wilson  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  shared  in 
Dr.  Benedict's  alarm.  The  vows,  he  said,  "sent  a  thrill 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  church  in  this  land." 


150  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

"Has  the  verdict  of  the  ages,"  he  asked,  "been  set  aside, 
and  is  the  revival  of  monachism  an  acknowledged  neces- 
sity of  the  day?" 

Another  correspondent  remembered  how,  in  1849,  Bishop 
Ives  of  North  Carolina  had  founded  an  Order  of  the  Holy 
Cross  at  Valle  Crucis,  and  had  afterwards  abolished  it, 
saying  that  "from  his  experience  of  the  results  upon  the 
minds  of  young  men  he  was  satisfied  that  no  vows,  besides 
those  expressly  required  by  our  ritual,  ought  to  be  taken 
in  our  Church."  He  did  not  add  the  curious  fact  that 
Bishop  Ives,  in  1852,  resigned  his  bishopric  and  became 
a  member  of  a  church  in  which  such  vows  are  held  in  high 
esteem. 

But  the  opposition  had  already  found  its  chief  spokes- 
man in  the  Presiding  Bishop.  The  death  of  Bishop  Smith 
had  left  Bishop  Alfred  Lee  of  Delaware  the  senior  among 
his  brethren.  On  December  llth,  he  wrote  Bishop  Potter 
a  note  of  friendly  but  very  serious  criticism  and  protest. 
And  this,  on  December  15th,  Bishop  Potter  answered  at 
some  length. 

"I  take  the  liberty  of  a  brother  bishop,"  wrote  Bishop 
Lee,  "to  express  to  you,  with  the  utmost  respect  and  af- 
fection but  with  plainness  and  candor,  the  astonishment 
and  distress  occasioned  by  your  recent  unexampled  act, 
the  admission  of  Mr.  Huntington  to  a  so-called  religious 
order,  after  requiring  of  him  the  well-known  Romish  vows. 

"When  first  mentioned,  I  discredited  the  report.  Upon 
reading  the  published  accounts  I  find  the  ceremony,  with 
the  language  used,  even  more  objectionable  than  it  had 
been  represented.  In  that  service  not  only  the  whole 
monastic  system  was  sanctioned  by  you,  in  your  official 
character,  but  attributed  to  divine  inspiration,  the  solemn 
language  of  our  ordinal  being  adopted.  It  has  been  on 
trial  for  hundreds  of  years,  and  with  whatever  of  sincerity 
and  zeal  started  under  different  forms,  the  fruits  have 
been  evil  and  pernicious.  It  was  utterly  repudiated  by 
the  Church  of  England  at  the  Reformation,  and  has  since 


THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS        151 

been  rejected  with  loathing  by  several  Roman  Catholic 
countries.  Sacerdotal  celibacy  has  a  history  of  shame, 
suffering  and  sin,  traced  in  indelible  characters.  The  cor- 
rupt morals  of  the  priesthood  wherever  Romanism  is  in 
the  ascendant  is  a  notorious  fact  and  frightful  comment 
on  the  attempt  to  over-ride  God's  laws  and  to  set  ,up  a 
purer  standard  than  the  Holy  Scriptures.  No  attempt, 
however  specious,  to  introduce  the  system  in  our  Church 
can  fail  to  awake  earnest  and  indignant  condemnation. 

"Now,  my  dear  brother,  this  is  not  a  matter  that  con- 
cerns simply  yourself  and  your  diocese.  The  whole  church 
is  most  deeply  concerned,  especially  the  Episcopate.  We 
are  one  body.  The  character,  reputation,  influence  and 
official  acts  belong,  in  a  sense,  to  all. 

"I  will  not  now  remark  upon  the  phraseology  employed, 
so  unknown  in  our  formularies,  and  open  to  severe  criticism. 
But  I  do  entreat  and  charge  you,  in  the  name  of  God,  to 
pause  before  the  repetition  of  such  an  act,  and  I  wish  that 
it  might  be  possible  for  you  in  some  way  to  allay  the  in- 
tense anxiety  and  alarm  which  will  be  felt  throughout  the 
Church." 

Bishop  Lee  signed  himself,  "In  Christian  love,  your  own 
friend  and  your  father's  friend." 

"I  have  your  letter  of  the  llth,"  said  Bishop  Potter  in 
reply,  "and  am  sincerely  pained  to  learn  from  it  that  any 
act  of  mine  has  been  such  as  to  give  you  occasion  of  alarm 
and  distress. 

"The  ceremony  to  which  you  refer  was  not,  in  more 
than  one  particular,  such  as  commended  itself  to  my  taste 
or  judgment,  but  inferring  from  it  my  'sanction  of  the 
whole  monastic  system'  you  are,  I  think,  reading  into  it 
more  than  is  warranted  by  the  facts. 

"A  young  man  took  a  vow  of  celibacy,  poverty  and 
obedience  to  the  rules  of  the  Society  into  which  he  invited 
himself.  It  is  in  substance  precisely  the  same  vow  which 
is  taken  by  every  woman  who  joins  a  Sisterhood.  Her 
obligations  bind  her  to  poverty,  to  a  single  life,  and  to 


152  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

obedience  to  the  rules  of  the  Sisterhood.  But  Sisterhoods 
have  received  the  implicit  if  not  explicit  recognition  and 
sanction  of  the  Church  in  its  highest  missionary  and  legis- 
lative councils,  and  are  an  established  part  of  its  machinery 
of  service.  I  am  unable  to  see  that  the  right  of  Sister- 
hoods to  exist  among  us  does  not  imply  the  same  right  in 
Brotherhoods  established  for  the  same  purpose. 

"As  to  the  history  of  Religious  Orders,  I  am  not  ignorant, 
and  as  to  their  possible  dangers,  I  am  sure  I  am  not  in- 
different. That  they  became  corrupt  and  scandalous 
during  the  pre-Reformation  days  is  a  fact  not  open  to  dis- 
pute. So  did  the  Church  itself.  But  the  Church  was  re- 
formed, while  Religious  Orders,  in  England,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  destroyed.  On  the  theory  that  the  Reformation 
was  a  finality  (which  is,  I  know,  the  theory,  or  rather  the 
profound  belief  of  many  excellent  men)  there  is  no  appeal 
from  this  action,  and  there  can  be,  it  is  assumed,  no  question 
as  to  its  wisdom.  But  I  cannot  say  that,  in  my  judgment, 
the  Reformation  was  a  finality.  As  to  its  enormous  benefits 
to  the  Church,  and  to  human  society,  I  am  in  no  doubt  at 
all,  and  I  revere  some  of  its  leaders  with  a  profound  and 
grateful  homage.  But  they  were  men,  and  the  frailties 
and  mistakes  of  men  are  seen  in  all  that  they  did.  The 
iconoclastic  spirit,  of  which  we  may  see  an  illustration  in 
the  west  front  of  Exeter  Cathedral,  appears  in  sweeping 
and  wholesale  destructions  and  expulsions  other  than  those 
connected  with  material  structures.  Perhaps  the  Religious 
Orders  of  that  day  did  not  deserve  to  be  spared.  Certainly, 
the  so-called  'contemplative'  Orders,  who  claimed  (as 
some  of  their  successors  still  claim)  to  be  known  and 
designated  as  'the  Religious,'  merited  scanty  forbearance 
in  an  age  wrhen  multitudes  were  perishing  while  they 
were  chanting  litanies  and  spending  their  days  in  splendid 
religious  'functions,'  and  over  questions  of  upholstery 
and  embroidery. 

"But  what  is  the  situation  in  the  case  of  the  two  young 
men  who  have  been  admitted  to  the  Brotherhood  to  which 


THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS       153 

your  letter  refers  ?  *  Here  is  first  one  young  man  and  then 
another,  who  feel  profoundly  moved  by  the  condition  of 
the  godless  thousands  and  ten  thousands  who  crowd  our 
tenement-houses  in  New  York.  Do  you  know,  my  dear 
and  honored  Presiding  Bishop,  what  a  tenement-house  in 
New  York  is?  Do  you  know  the  profound  and  wide- 
spread apathy  of  the  Christian  community  concerning 
these  schools  of  poverty,  misery  and  almost  inevitable 
vice?  Do  you  know  that  our  own  Church's  mission  work 
in  New  York  has,  thus  far,  not  touched  the  fringe  of  this 
awful  mass  of  sorrow  and  sin?  All  this  these  young  men 
came  to  see  and  know,  by  personal  observation  and  actual 
contact. 

"And  then  they  said,  and  said  as  I  believe  rightly,  If 
we  are  to  reach  these  people  we  must,  first  of  all,  live  among 
them.  It  will  not  answer  to  have  a  home  and  interests 
elsewhere,  and  then  to  walk  over  to  the  Mission  Chapel 
and  go  about  among  the  tenement  population  three  or 
four  times  a  week.  If  we  are  to  get  close  to  their  hearts 
we  must  get  close  to  their  lives. 

"And  then,  too,  they  said,  'If  we  are  to  do  this  work 
we  must  strip  like  the  gladiator  for  the  fight.  We  must 
be  disencumbered  of  every  tie  and  interest  that  can  hinder 
or  embarrass  us.  We  must  be  willing  to  be  poor,  to  live 
alone,  to  obey  a  fixed  rule  (or  regimen)  of  life,  that  so  we 
may  give  ourselves  wholly  to  this  work.' 

"There  was  a  time  when  our  Master  said,  'Carry  neither 
purse  nor  scrip.'  There  was  a  time  when  His  Apostle 
said,  'He  that  is  unmarried  careth  for  the  things  of  the 
Lord  that  he  may  please  the  Lord,'  and  again,  'Obey  them 
that  have  the  rule  over  you,  and  submit  yourselves.'  There 
was  a  time,  in  a  word,  when  in  a  special  emergency,  men 
voluntarily  took  on  them  the  soldier  life  and  the  soldier 
rule,  turning  their  backs  on  home  and  gain  and  a  self- 
directed  life. 

" '  It  is  such  a  time  and  such  an  emergency  that  confronts 

1Mr.  Dod  was  admitted  only  as  a  "  novice." 


154  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

us  to-day.  We  do  not  want  the  help  of  a  Brotherhood  to 
retreat  from  the  world,  merely  to  coddle  our  selfish  souls 
and  call  it  sainthood,  we  want  a  rule  and  vows  that  shall 
bind  us  to  a  hard  task  under  sanctions  the  most  august 
and  urgent.' 

"And  so  they  took  their  vow.  I  do  not  see  how  they 
can  be  faulted  unless  all  particular  and  special  vows  are 
wrong.  It  may  be  said  that  their  baptismal  and  ordina- 
tion vows  are  enough.  But  if  a  clergyman  came  to  you 
(as  once  and  again  such  an  one  has  come  to  me)  and  said, 
'I  am  in  danger  from  a  tendency  to  intemperance,  I  want 
to  take  a  vow  of  total  abstinence.  I  want  to  take  it  with 
the  most  solemn  sanctions,  in  your  presence,  on  my  knees, 
with  my  hands  on  the  Holy  Bible,'  would  you  refuse  him? 
Is  he  not  entitled  to  every  such  help  so  long  as  the  thing 
which  he  vows  is  not  in  itself  sinful  or  inconsistent  with 
the  Christian  calling?  And  is  poverty  inconsistent  with 
the  Christian  calling?  is  the  unmarried  state?  is  obedience 
to  a  daily  rule  of  work  and  prayer?  To  say  that  these 
things  may  be  abused  is  to  say  what  may  be  said  of  the 
Bible,  or  the  sacrament,  or  any  other  means  of  grace. 
Prayer,  or  church-going,  may  be  so  indulged  in  as  to  lead 
to  the  neglect  of  daily  duties  and  the  most  important 
obligations.  But  such  an  error  is  not  the  danger  of  our 
time,  nor  is  poverty,  nor  the  surrender  of  the  privileges 
and  pleasures  of  the  married  life,  or  of  the  freedom  of  our 
own  way. 

"And  if  it  be  said  that  such  vows  are  the  setting  of  a 
standard  of  piety  not  known  to  the  Church,  and  the  ar- 
rogance of  a  superiority  over  other  Christian  disciples,  it 
is  enough  to  say  on  the  one  hand  that  there  is  no  slightest 
assertion  of  such  superiority,  and  on  the  other  that  the 
threefold  vow  of  this  Order  of  men  only  follows  the  ac- 
cepted usage  in  regard  to  the  threefold  obligation  of  the 
Orders  of  women.  It  is,  indeed,  assumed,  I  understand 
by  those  who  criticise  them,  that  the  vows  to  which  you 
refer  are  irrevocable,  and  this  is  regarded  as  an  especial 


HKNKY  CODMAN  POTTER 
About  1S54 


THE    ORDER   OF   THE    HOLY   CROSS  155 

reason  for  protesting  against  them.  If  it  were  true,  it 
would  be.  But  it  is  not.  I  should  have  declined  to  ad- 
minister such  vows,  and  those  which  I  did  administer  were 
explicitly  acknowledged  to  be  revocable  either  at  my  own 
discretion  or  at  the  urgent  request  of  him  who  took  them. 

"You  conclude  by  remarking,  'this  is  not  a  matter  which 
concerns  simply  yourself  or  your  diocese.  The  whole 
church  is  most  deeply  concerned,  and  especially  the  Epis- 
copate. We  are  one  body.  The  character,  reputation, 
influence,  and  official  act  belongs  in  a  sense  to  all.' 

"I  am  not  quite  sure  that  I  understand  this  language, 
but  if  you  mean  (a)  that  the  administration  of  a  vow  to 
any  person  who  desires  to  take  it  is  distinctly  an  '  official,' 
i.e.  an  episcopal,  act,  then  I  have  only  to  say  that  it  is 
competent  to  any  presbyter  to  administer  such  vows  as 
you  refer  to,  and  that  my  act  was  in  no  sense  episcopal. 
It  was  not  a  confirmation,  or  ordination,  or  consecration. 
It  was  receiving  a  promise  —  a  vow,  solemn  and  unique 
indeed,  but  so  in  a  sense  every  vow  should  be. 

"Or,  if  you  mean  (6)  that  any  individual  act  of  mine, 
however  unofficial,  binds  all  my  brethren,  then  I  can  only 
say  such  a  position  is  one  which  would  leave  one  without 
any  individual  discretion  whatever.  I  went  the  other  day 
to  lend  the  sanction  of  my  presence  and  voice  to  the  open- 
ing of  a  free  library  by  persons  who  do  not  profess  even 
to  be  Christians,  and  whose  only  aim  is  to  provide  pure 
and  instructive  secular  reading  for  poor  people.  I  pre- 
sume the  great  majority  of  my  episcopal  brethren  would 
say  that  I  had  no  business  to  have  been  there,  but  if  I  had 
supposed  or  understood  that  my  liberty  of  action  in  such 
a  case  was  surrendered  when  I  was  consecrated  a  bishop, 
I  would  have  refused  the  heavy  burden  which  I  now  bear, 
as  involving  not  only  a  burden  but  a  bondage  not  to  be 
endured. 

"One  word  more,  and  I  am  sure  you  will  not  misunder- 
stand it.  You  subscribe  yourself  with,  I  am  sure,  true 
and  tender  affection  —  would  that  I  were  worthier  of  it ! 


156  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

'In  Christian  love  your  own  friend,  and  your  father's  friend' 
Believe  me,  my  dear  Presiding  Bishop,  you  could  have 
conjured  by  no  more  potent  earthly  spell  than  that !  I 
revere  my  father's  memory  as  that  of  the  noblest  prelate 
and  the  wisest  man  I  ever  knew.  I  am  not  worthy  to 
bear  his  name,  still  less  his  great  and  holy  office.  But  all 
that  I  know  of  generous  and  fair  dealing  with  men  of  va- 
rious minds  and  faiths  within  the  Church  of  God,  he  taught 
me.  He  dreaded  the  taint  of  Roman  error  and  I  do.  But 
he  believed  that  things  that  had  been  abused  were  not 
necessarily  evil  in  themselves.  And  had  he  lived  on  and 
into  the  new  conditions  and  sore  needs  of  our  day,  he  would 
have  owned,  I  think,  that  an  Order  of  Men  under  obliga- 
tions in  no  essential  particular  different  from  those  of 
Orders  of  Women  might  do  a  John  the  Baptist's  work  if 
need  be,  crying  in  the  wilderness  of  a  great  city's  sin  that 
men  should  repent  and  open  in  their  hearts  a  highway 
for  their  Lord.  If  I  did  not  think  that  he  would  have 
thought  so,  you  may  be  sure  that  I  would  not  have  done 
what  I  have. 

"And  yet  I  may  be  mistaken.  I  may  well  distrust  my 
own  judgment  when  it  conflicts  with  yours.  And  I  desire 
to  say  therefore  that  in  this  matter  I  shall  be  entirely 
ready  to  submit  myself  to  the  judgment  of  my  fathers  and 
brethren  in  the  episcopate.  If  they  think  that  I  have 
erred,  or  have  exceeded  my  authority,  I  shall  not  hesitate 
to  advise  my  young  brother  that  in  administering  to  him 
vows  which  have  been  objected  to  I  am  deemed  to  have 
transcended  my  powers,  and  to  have  acted  unwisely  and 
wrongly,  and  that  therefore,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  he 
is  dispensed  from  their  obligations  thenceforth  and  finally. 

"But  will  you  forgive  me  if  I  add  that  in  doing  so  I  shall 
not  surrender  my  own  judgment  as  to  the  expediency  and 
propriety  of  my  action,  until  convinced  by  arguments  more 
sufficient  and  conclusive  than  have  yet  been  addressed  to  me. 

"And,  having  said  this  much,  will  you  still  further  pardon 
me  if  I  also  add  that  pressed  us  I  am  by  manifold  duties 


THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS        157 

which  leave  me  scant  leisure  and  less  time  for  controversy, 
with  this  letter  this  correspondence,  so  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, must  close?  Having  given  my  reasons  for  the 
act  which  you  fault,  and  having  expressed  my  readiness  to 
submit  to  the  judgment  of  my  fathers  and  brethren  in  the 
episcopate,  I  must  be  permitted  to  turn  my  face  and  my 
thoughts  to  other  tasks  and  immediate  duties." 

In  a  postscript,  he  added ;  that  as  a  means  of  indicating 
his  readiness  to  submit  to  the  judgment  of  his  brethren  he 
would  take  the  liberty  of  sending  to  the  bishops  a  copy  of 
this  correspondence. 

Bishop  Lee  replied  in  a  letter  of  great  length.  "We  have 
observed,"  he  said,  "with  great  thankfulness  your  zealous 
and  energetic  labors  for  the  promotion  of  temperance,  for 
the  elevation  intellectually  and  morally,  of  the  laborer, 
your  endeavor  to  reclaim  the  fallen  and  to  gather  outcasts 
within  the  fold  of  Christ.  But  I  am  at  a  loss  to  see  the 
necessary  connection  between  such  commendable  and 
charitable  works  and  ceremonies  of  the  kind  practised  at 
the  consecration  of  Mr.  Huntington."  Many  persons,  he 
said,  are  doing  such  work  effectively  and  at  the  cost  of 
self-sacrifice,  but  "unostentatiously,  without  calling  upon 
the  world  to  behold  and  applaud  their  self-devotion  and 
heroism."  He  cited  the  sad  history  of  religious  orders. 
Even  St.  Francis  failed  to  overcome  their  fatal  tendency 
to  arrogance  and  avarice.  The  principle,  he  continued,  is 
inherently  vicious. 

As  for  Sisterhoods,  he  remembered  that  the  matter  had 
been  discussed  in  the  General  Conventions  of  1877  and 
1880,  and  that  the  recommendation  of  the  House  of  Bishops 
that  no  sister  should  take  a  vow  of  perpetual  obligation, 
and  that  every  Sisterhood  should  be  under  "adequate 
episcopal  supervision,"  had  failed  to  pass  the  House  of 
Deputies.  "So  that  attempts  to  obtain  for  Sisterhoods 
the  recognition  and  sanction  of  the  Church  have  failed 
through  the  apparent  unwillingness  of  their  friends  to 
consent  to  such  safeguards  against  the  introduction  of  false 


158  HEXRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

teaching  and  other  possible  abuses  as  to  the  bishops  seemed 
indispensable.  Where,  then,  is  'the  sanction  and  recogni- 
tion of  our  highest  councils?'  That  such  institutions  do 
exist  in  some  of  our  dioceses,  I  am  well  aware.  That  ir- 
revocable vows  are  taken  in  entering  any  of  them,  I  was  not 
aware.  I  had  a  contrary  impression  at  the  time  I  wrote 
you." 

He  discussed  the  statement  that  the  vows  which  were 
in  form  binding  throughout  life  were  at  the  same  time 
"explicitly  acknowledged  to  be  revocable."  "If,"  he  said, 
"the  member  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy  Cross,  after  making 
such  promises,  can  withdraw  at  will,  wherein  lies  the  moral 
force  which  is  sought  to  strengthen  and  fortify  the  man 
who  is  to  engage  in  a  stern  encounter  with  the  enemy. 
The  whole  object  seems  to  me  to  be  frustrated  by  such  a 
reservation.  It  requires  no  extraordinary  resolve  or  prep- 
aration, or  armour  of  triple  mail,  for  a  man  to  embark  in 
an  enterprise  with  the  understanding  that  if  on  trial  he 
got  weary  or  discouraged,  he  may  let  it  alone,  or  procure 
a  dispensation.  Neither  does  it  follow  that  the  adminis- 
tration of  a  vow  gives  the  person  imposing  it  authority 
to  dissolve  it  at  his  discretion.  I  cannot  see  what  human 
authority  can  release  the  devotee." 

As  for  the  vow  being  one  which  any  presbyter  could  have 
received,  and  thus  in  no  way  involving  the  episcopate, 
"Why  were  you  called  upon  to  officiate  on  this  occasion, 
rather  than  a  presbyter?  Was  it  not  to  obtain  for  the 
proceeding  the  sanction  of  your  name?  to  obtain  in  this 
way  for  monastic  institutions  a  credit  and  prestige  which 
they  have  never  had  in  our  church  ?  to  gain  thereby  a  van- 
tage-ground for  the  wider  introduction  and  establishment 
of  this  institution?  Is  this  system  of  pretension  and  morbid 
pietism  not  to  go  beyond  the  city  and  diocese  of  Xew  York? 
I  do  think  I  am  warranted  in  saying  that  this  act  concerns 
all  your  brethren." 

The  public  episcopal  correspondence  ceased  at  this  point, 
but  the  Assistant  Bishop's  table  was  piled  with  letters 


THE  ORDER  OP  THE  HOLY  CROSS        159 

approving  or  condemning.  Father  Huntington  had  already 
written:  "Some  echoes  of  the  newspaper  clamour  about 
my  profession  have  probably  reached  you.  I  am  sorry 
to  have  been  the  cause  of  the  hostile  criticism  that  has 
been  directed  against  you,  and  I  sincerely  regret  any  an- 
noyance you  may  have  been  made  to  feel.  We  have  al- 
ways felt  that  if  our  work  and  life  were  real  they  would 
meet  with  opposition,  but  I  supposed  that  the  hostility 
would  be  against  us,  and  had  no  idea  that  I  should  stir 
up  abuse  and  animosity  to  one  who  has  been  so  kind  and 
generous  to  us  as  you  have  been."  Bishop  Littlejohn 
was  "apprehensive  of  consequences,  which  in  the  breadth 
of  your  sympathy  and  in  your  earnest  desire  to  promote 
a  very  difficult  and  noble  work,  were  not,  at  the  time, 
apparent  to  you."  Bishop  Stevens  wrote  "with  great 
pain  and  regret"  to  say  "how  sad  I  have  been  made  by  the 
service  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Holy  Cross."  He  found  the 
whole  service  "contrary  to  the  doctrine,  discipline  and 
worship  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church."  Bishop 
Bedell  had  been  given  "a  severe  shock."  Dr.  Satterlee, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Washington,  wrote  from  the  rectory 
of  Calvary  Church,  "it  was  a  sad  service  to  me." 

On  the  other  hand  Bishop  Whitehead  thanked  Bishop 
Potter  for  "being  brave  enough  to  put  into  words  what  so 
many  of  us  feel,  that  the  Reformation  was  not  a  finality." 
Bishop  Scarborough  deprecated  the  letter  of  the  Presiding 
Bishop,  in  which  he  found  the  peril  of  a  new  papacy. 
Bishop  Knickerbacker  said,  "I  heartily  approve  of  your 
course."  Bishop  McLaren  wrote,  "Of  course,  I  detest 
monkery  in  its  abuse,  but  knowing  Huntington  and  his 
work,  I  would  we  had  a  thousand  such." 

Dr.  Richards  was  almost  convinced  by  Bishop  Potter's 
letter.  "It  quite  removes  the  one  gravest  objection  to 
your  course,  in  saying  that  those  vows  were  explicitly 
acknowledged  to  be  revocable.  I  think  nobody  under- 
stood this,  and  that  the  chief  opposition  to  the  matter 
has  been  silenced  by  your  assurance.  If  that  statement 


160  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

had  been  contained  in  the  original  report,  I  believe  all 
sober  and  true  men  would  have  held  their  peace,  even 
while  they  doubted.  One  thing,  I  believe  few  have  doubted, 
-  the  spirit  of  your  act,  its  generosity,  its  courage,  its  prac- 
tical aim.  If  there  are  still  some  who  think  that  the  im- 
mediate benefit  may  not  compensate  for  the  ultimate,  his- 
torically proven  perils  of  such  an  order  thus  publicly  set 
on  foot,  why  I  suppose  you  will  have  to  leave  the  future  to 
decide  between  them  and  you." 

Even  Heber  Newton  wrote  a  letter  of  confidence  and 
approval.  "I  was  greatly  annoyed  and  indignant/'  he 
said,  "to  see  in  yesterday's  Herald,  just  before  leaving  the 
city,  a  three-quarter-of-a-column  interview  with  me  on  the 
subject  of  Mr.  Huntington.  I  telegraphed  you  on  my 
way  out  that  the  interview  was  a  wholesale  fabrication, 
no  reporter  coming  to  see  me.  No  one  whatever  could 
have  gotten  a  word  from  me  on  the  subject.  The  report 
yesterday  is  a  lie  from  beginning  to  end.  Some  nasty 
fellow  took  a  report  of  my  remarks  in  the  Wiclif  sermon, 
and  interjected  questions,  and  made  it  appear  like  a  con- 
versation ;  adding  wholly  new  matter  out  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness ;  and  concluded  with  a  paragraph  from  the  same 
sermon,  having  no  reference  whatever  to  the  matter  in 
hand.  It  is  a  stupid  piece  of  work  for  the  Herald,  and  an 
unpardonable  outrage,  if  the  editor  knew  its  character.  I 
trust  that  one  of  your  early  episcopal  fulminations  will  be 
to  charge  upon  the  big  bullies  of  civilization,  the  news- 
papers. I  have  sins  enough  of  my  own  to  answer  for,  with- 
out having  fathered  upon  me  any  utterances  which  the 
geniuses  of  the  press  imagine  I  ought  to  say. 

"They  seem  to  use  me  at  present  as  the  raw  material 
for  any  sensation  they  want  to  kick  up  in  theological  circles, 
and  there  are  fools  enough  in  our  own  ministry  to  abet 
them  in  this  happy  thought. 

"If  you  at  any  time  find  me  reported  to  have  criticised 
your  action,  write  it  down  a  lie.  In  the  Wiclif  sermon  I 
came  right  upon  the  question  of  monastic  orders.  I  would 


THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS        161 

not  have  gone  out  of  my  way  to  raise  the  subject  in  the 
pulpit,  but  when  it  thrust  itself  across  my  path  I  said  a 
few  calm,  quiet  words  upon  the  tendencies  at  work  in  one 
school  of  our  church ;  which  I  prefaced  with  a  disclaimer 
of  not  wishing  to  criticise  my  bishop,  and  by  an  avowal  of 
my  hearty  faith  in  his  wisdom  and  judgment. 

"I  have  shown  you  a  year  ago  my  readiness  to  go  all 
lengths  possible  to  support  you,  and  you  will  find  no  warmer 
backer  in  any  troubles  that  you  may  get  into  out  of  this 
affair  than  myself.  While  I  am  utterly  opposed  to  the 
revival  of  a  system  which  has  been  tried  and  condemned 
by  history,  I  will  for  one  be  behind  you  with  a  stout  club, 
where  all  your  other  loyal  presbyters  will  be,  if  the  dear 
Papa  of  Delaware  attempts  to  call  you  in  question  before 
the  church  for  your  liberty  and  right  as  a  bishop.  You 
have  got  the  most  affectionate  and  loyal  following  in  your 
presbyters,  who  are  very  much  tempted  to  say  '  Our  Bishop, 
right  or  wrong.'  We  all  know  what  a  mighty  job  you 
have  on  your  hands,  and  we  follow  your  enthusiastic  labors 
with  our  admiration  and  our  prayers." 

So  said  many  other  less  conspicuous,  but  no  less  loyal, 
parsons.  Among  the  lay  supporters  came  the  President 
of  Cornell  University,  Dr.  Andrew  D.  White,  saying,  "Allow 
me  to  thank  you  most  heartily  for  your  letter  to  Bishop  Lee 
which  I  find  in  the  Evening  Post.  It  is  admirable  from  every 
point  of  view,  and  I  acknowledge  myself  converted  by  it." 

In  the  years  that  have  since  passed,  the  Order  of  the 
Holy  Cross  has  proceeded  in  its  mission  without  justifying 
either  the  fears  of  those  who  were  alarmed  by  its  appear- 
ance, or  the  hopes  of  those  who  found  in  it  a  new  service 
of  the  poor. 

The  Order  grew  very  quietly  and  slowly.  Father  Hun- 
tington  was  for  a  good  while  its  only  professed  member. 
The  next  imposition  of  its  vows  attracted  no  great  atten- 
tion. Bishop  Lee  did  not  pursue  the  matter  further, 
and  Bishop  Potter's  action  was  not  made  the  subject  of 
any  official  consideration.  The  Churchman,  in  its  gentle 


162  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

way,  expressed  the  general  mind.  "The  straightforward 
and  brotherly  letter  of  the  Bishop  of  Delaware,"  it  said, 
"gives  full  expression  to  the  opinions  which  were  enter- 
tained by  many  on  first  hearing  of  the  service  of  profession. 
The  equally  kind  and  direct  letter  of  the  Assistant  Bishop 
of  New  York  explains  very  clearly  and  frankly  his  position 
and  his  own  reasons  for  taking  part  in  the  service."  Bishop 
Potter,  in  his  next  Convention  Address  did  not  refer  to 
the  matter.  "On  the  14th  of  September/'  he  said,  "I 
consecrated  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Cross,  in  this  city, 
designed  for  mission  work  more  especially  among  the  large 
German  population  who  surround  it.  ...  On  the  day  of 
its  consecration  it  was  filled  by  a  congregation  among  whom 
the  large  body  of  workingmen  was  a  notable  feature.  May 
Christ  be  preached  in  this  holy  and  beautiful  house  to 
many  weary  and  heavy  laden  souls  in  all  the  fullness  of 
His  perfect  and  completed  sacrifice." 

It  appeared,  however,  that  the  mission  to  workingmen 
was  only  an  incidental,  or  even  accidental,  part  of  the 
purpose  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy  Cross.  The  intention 
from  the  beginning  was  to  preach  wherever  opportunity 
was  offered,  to  conduct  retreats  and  missions,  and  to  minister 
to  the  individual  conscience  in  the  discipline  of  the  confes- 
sional. They  were  entirely  frank  about  it,  while  constantly 
deferential  to  Bishop  Potter's  counsel.  Shortly  before  the 
consecration  of  the  church,  Father  Huntington  wrote  to 
the  Bishop,  "With  regard  to  the  confessional  boxes,  I  would 
say  that  I  went  at  once  to  Dr.  Houghton,  the  warden  of 
the  St.  John  Baptist  Foundation  (on  which  rests  the  re- 
sponsibility of  preparing  the  church  for  the  consecration) 
and  he  desires  me  to  tell  you  that  confessional  boxes  and  a 
tabernacle  will  certainly  not  be  placed  in  the  new  church. 

"There  is  in  the  south  wall  of  the  sanctuary  an  aumbry 
or  locker.  This  is  intended  for  holding  the  sacred  vessels, 
and  not  for  Reservation  of  the  Sacrament.  I  have,  how- 
ever, seen  it  so  used  in  Scotland,  where,  as  you  know,  the 
Prayer  Book  allows  Reservation  for  the  sick.  I  mention 


THE   ORDER   OF  THE   HOLY   CROSS  163 

this  that  we  may  not  be  open  to  the  charge  of  hiding  any- 
thing, however  small.  I  first  saw  an  aumbry  in  St.  James' 
Church,  Syracuse. 

"For  the  reason  just  mentioned  I  would  say  that  there 
is  to  be  a  rood-beam  with  a  crucifix  on  it,  and  figures  of 
St.  Mary  and  St.  John,  and  also  seven  lamps  suspended 
from  it. 

"For  ourselves  we  feel  most  deeply  your  great  kindness 
to  us,  and  we  desire  to  heed  your  counsel  wherever  or  how- 
ever given.  We  do  try  to  set  aside  personal  liking  and 
individual  taste  and  to  have  an  eye  simply  to  the  glory  of 
God  and  the  good  of  the  souls  submitted  to  us.  At  the 
same  time  we  feel  sure  that  you  would  not  wish  us  to  forego 
the  use  of  anything  of  real  spiritual  benefit  to  our  people 
which  is  allowed  and  provided  for  by  the  Church,  and 
we  cannot  but  feel  that  confession  —  not  in  the  sense  of 
an  obligation  upon  all,  but  of  a  privilege  extended  to  those 
who  feel  a  need  for  it  —  must  be  a  fixed  and  definite  feature 
of  our  mission  work.  But  while  saying  this,  we  wish  to 
disclaim  (since  the  opportunity  is  now  given)  the  use  of 
direction  in  the  technical  sense  of  the  word.  The  laying 
upon  the  conscience  of  a  penitent  of  commands  which  are 
not  the  expression  of  the  revealed  will  of  God,  or  even  the 
enforcement  of  the  dictates  of  the  penitent's  own  conscience, 
but  which  rest  simply  on  the  authority  of  the  priest,  this 
seems  to  us  fraught  with  danger  to  both  priest  and  penitent, 
and  to  be  the  source  of  many  of  the  worst  evils  connected 
with  confession  in  the  past." 

The  subsequent  removal  of  the  Order  from  the  tenement- 
house  district,  and  its  establishment,  after  some  years,  in 
a  monastery  among  the  green  fields  of  West  Park,  on  the 
bank  of  the  Hudson,  while  it  dulled  the  point  of  some  of 
the  most  convincing  paragraphs  of  Bishop  Potter's  letter, 
was  entirely  consistent  with  the  plans  which  the  founders 
of  the  Order  had  in  their  minds. 

Concerning  the  nature  of  the  vows,  whether  revocable 
or  irrevocable,  Bishop  Potter  wrote  on  September  15,  1885, 


164  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

to  Mrs.  Katherine  C.  Geer,  "In  reply  to  your  letter  of  the 
10th  inst.,  I  beg  to  say  that;  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  there 
are  no  irrevocable  vows  in  the  Anglican  Church,  or  our 
own,  but  that  one  may  be  released  from  the  vow  of  any 
Religious  Community  whatever  may  have  been  its  nature, 
by  the  proper  authority  in  each  instance  provided,  whether 
presbyter  or  bishop.  I  believe  there  are  vows,  though  I 
have  no  definite  knowledge  in  regard  to  them,  which  in 
some  Anglican  Communities  are  not  regarded  as  revocable, 
but,  so  far  as  I  am  informed,  they  exist  as  part  of  the  theory 
rather  than  the  practice  of  such  communities. 

"In  fact,  the  Church  knows  nothing  of  irrevocable  vows, 
of  any  kind,  except  they  be  the  baptismal  vows  and  their 
reaffirmation  in  Confirmation.  These  may  be  regarded 
as  her  'general  vows,'  of  obligation  perpetually  with  all 
Christian  people.  Besides  these,  the  only  other  vows 
(which  may  be  called  'special  vows')  for  which  this  Church 
in  the  Prayer  Book  provides,  are  those  of  marriage  and 
ordination.  In  both  these  cases,  the  vow  is  explicitly,  or 
implicitly,  for  life.  'Till  death  do  us  part'  is  the  language 
of  the  marriage  service,  and  in  the  ordination  service  the 
implication  is  that  the  dedication  of  oneself  is  for  life ; 
yet,  as  we  know,  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  the  subject 
of  the  vow  may  be  released  from  it  by  competent  authority. 
The  church  as  well  as  the  state  recognizes  a  valid  ground  of 
divorce,  and  says  to  those  who  seek  it  on  such  ground,  'You 
are  free.'  And  in  the  same  way,  while  no  bishop  would 
ordain  one  saying,  'I  come  to  you  for  orders  with  the  pur- 
pose of  exercising  my  ministry  only  for  a  time,'  and  while 
it  is  distinctly  understood  on  both  sides  that  the  ordination 
vow  is  of  lifelong  obligation,  yet,  for  reasonable  cause,  not 
at  all  affecting  his  moral  character  (e.g.  loss  of  voice,  eye- 
sight, or  some  other  physical  or  mental  disqualification 
experienced  subsequent  to  ordination)  a  bishop  may  de- 
pose a  deacon  or  presbyter  from  the  ministry.  It  is  the 
same,  if  I  understand  aright,  with  the  vows  of  Religious 
Communities.  They  employ  a  language  which  indicates  a 


THE  ORDER  OF  THE  HOLY  CROSS        165 

general  purpose.  But,  as  in  the  marriage  service,  it  is 
not  thought  either  necessary  or  expedient  to  introduce 
a  proviso  or  qualification  into  the  language  of  a  vow  which 
is  not  necessarily  of  lifelong  obligation,  though  it  says  so ; 
so  it  is  in  the  vows  of  a  Religious  Community.  They  ex- 
press a  present  purpose  and  design.  They  can  do  no  more ; 
they  ought  not  to  do  less.  Because  one  who  wishes  to 
take  such  vows  may  lose  his  health  or  sight,  or  his  convic- 
tion of  the  wisdom  of  such  a  mode  of  life  as  he  is  choosing, 
must  he  take  a  vow  which  recites  all  these  conditions,  any 
more  than  a  bride  would  do  so  in  being  married?  They 
are  provisions  understood  and  assumed  to  be  reckoned-in, 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other;  and  vows  which  do  not 
include  all  such  provisos  in  the  case  of  one  joining  a  Re- 
ligious Order  can  be  criticised  only  by  those  who,  very 
seriously,  forget  that  the  vows  of  marriage  and  ordination 
are  open  to  the  very  same  criticism. 

"In  a  word,  special  vows  may  express  a  lifelong  purpose. 
They  can  do  no  more,  and  in  our  own  Church  cannot  con- 
sistently be  regarded  as  doing  any  more." 

He  added  a  paragraph  about  Roman  vows,  and  then 
concluded  his  letter  by  saying,  "if  they  [such  orders  as 
the  Holy  Cross]  are  only  specimens  of  ill-regulated  and 
unintelligent  enthusiasm,  even  then,  they  may  well  be 
borne  with  on  the  ground  that  unselfish  devotion  is  not 
to  be  too  sternly  discouraged,  no  matter  how  open  to  criti- 
cism may  be  some  of  its  methods.  We  must  judge  in  such 
cases  with  the  aim  and  purpose  in  mind.  If  that  is  to 
bring  men  to  Christ,  and  save  souls,  we  may  at  least  give 
it  a  chance  to  demonstrate,  by  its  success  or  failure,  its  com- 
petency to  do  so." 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   CASE   OF   MR.   RITCHIE 

1885 

THE  Rev.  Arthur  Ritchie  had  come  to  New  York  to  be 
the  rector  of  the  parish  of  St.  Ignatius.  He  had  been  in 
Chicago,  where  he  had  occasioned  criticism  by  his  ritual 
observances.  Even  Bishop  McLaren;  a  pronounced  high 
churchman,  had  taken  exception  to  his  doctrines  and  cere- 
monies. The  vestry  of  St.  Ignatius  had  been  in  some 
doubt  as  to  the  expediency  of  calling  Mr.  Ritchie,  but  he 
was  "very  strongly  recommended,"  as  Mr.  J.  R.  More- 
wood,  the  senior  warden,  wrote  to  the  bishop,  "by  several 
of  the  clergy  in  whose  judgment  we  have  great  reliance, 
and  who  assure  us  that  although  he  has  undoubtedly  made 
some  mistakes  in  Chicago,  he  himself  now  sees  and  recog- 
nizes wherein  he  has  erred,  and  that  we  need  have  no  appre- 
hension of  any  similar  trouble  should  he  come  to  this 
diocese." 

Unhappily  these  promises  of  amendment  were  soon  found 
to  have  been  made  not  by  Mr.  Ritchie  but  by  his  friends 
on  his  behalf.  He  began  immediately  to  conduct  the  ser- 
vices in  New  York  without  any  subtraction  of  the  prac- 
tices to  which  objection  had  been  made  in  Chicago.  Within 
a  year  it  became  necessary  for  the  Assistant  Bishop  to  call 
him  formally  to  account,  and,  on  his  refusal  to  obey,  to 
withdraw  his  official  recognition  of  the  parish. 

"Having  learned,"  said  Mr.  Ritchie  (Jan.  13,  1885), 
"that  it  is  customary  in  the  Diocese  of  New  York  for  parish 
priests  to  ask  the  Bishop  to  give  them  appointments  for 
Confirmation,  I  venture  to  request  that  at  your  convenience 

166 


THE   CASE   OF  MR.   RITCHIE  167 

you  would  assign  to  St.  Ignatius  some  date,  if  possible  before 
Easter." 

To  this  Bishop  Potter  replied,  "I  am  sincerely  sorry  to 
have  to  say  to  you  that  it  will  be  quite  impossible  for  me 
to  comply  with  your  request  to  appoint  a  time  for  an  Epis- 
copal Visitation  to  St.  Ignatius'  Church,  or  to  make  any 
such  Visitation,  until  the  services  to  which  I  called  your 
attention  in  our  last  interview  have  been  discontinued. 
These  services,  as  I  have  already  informed  you,  are  in  my 
judgment  unauthorized  and  unlawful,  and  they  have  been 
introduced  by  you  under  circumstances  which  have  been 
to  me  a  source  of  equal  pain  and  surprise. 

"I  need  not  recall  to  you  the  history  of  your  admission 
to  this  diocese.  It  is  not  so  remote  that  you  have  for- 
gotten it,  and  those  who  were  your  friends  have  never 
ceased  to  speak  of  it  as  marked  by  conduct  on  my  part 
which  was  alike  generous  and  magnanimous.  I  trusted 
you,  my  young  brother,  I  treated  you  as  one  Christian 
gentleman  should  treat  another,  and  I  leave  it  for  others 
to  say  whether  you  have  abused  my  confidence  or  no.  You 
have  in  your  possession,  unless  you  have  destroyed  it,  a 
letter  from  the  Rev'd.  Dr.  Richey  which  describes  your 
conduct  far  more  frankly  than  I  care  to ;  and  I  can  only 
repeat  that  until  you  can  see  fit  to  dispense  with  the  un- 
authorized acts  and  offices  of  worship  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred, I  must  deny  myself  the  privilege  of  coming  to  a 
church  which  hitherto  I  have  been  glad  to  serve,  and  whose 
best  interests  must  always  be  dear  to  me." 

Mr.  Ritchie  replied:  "Your  kind  letter  dated  Feb.  5th 
convinces  me  that  there  has  been  a  very  unfortunate  mis- 
take made  through  the  unwise  kindness  of  some  of  my 
friends.  It  is  this  mistake  which  makes  you  think  I  have 
abused  your  confidence.  But  I  have  not  done  so.  Three 
of  my  reverend  brethren,  among  them  Dr.  Richey,  wrote 
to  me  before  my  coming  to  St.  Ignatius,  and  I  answered 
their  letters.  My  answers  gave  no  warrant  to  any  of  them 
for  saying  that  I  would  not  do  the  same  things  in  New  York 


168  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

as  I  had  done  in  Chicago.  Nevertheless,  Dr.  Richey,  out 
of  honest  affection  for  me,  and  his  own  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things,  formed  the  theory  that  I  had  seen  my  mistake  in 
Chicago,  and  was  too  sensible  to  repeat  that  mistake  in 
New  York.  On  the  strength  of  this  theory,  quite  unsup- 
ported by  any  facts,  he  assured  the  vestry  of  St.  Ignatius 
(as  I  found  out  after  I  had  been  here  some  months)  that  I 
would  not  make  any  trouble  in  the  diocese  of  New  York. 
I  am  now  convinced  that  he  must  have  given  you  some 
similar  assurance  which  you  thought  came  from  me.  But 
believe  me,  my  dear  Bishop,  I  had  never  given  the  slightest 
reason  for  any  such  statement,  nor  was  I  aware  that  any 
such  statement  had  been  made  on  my  behalf  till  several 
months  after  I  was  settled  here.  Dr.  Richey  was  so  per- 
suaded in  his  own  mind  that  the  theory  he  had  advanced 
concerning  my  course  of  action  was  the  one  I  should  and 
would  adopt  that  when  he  found  I  was  doing  here  just 
what  I  had  done  in  Chicago,  he  felt  called  upon  to  denounce 
me  in  strong  terms  in  that  letter  to  which  you  allude,  which, 
however,  was  not  written  to  me  but  to  one  of  my  vestrymen. 

"I  certainly  came  to  New  York  expecting  to  teach  and 
practise  what  I  had  taught  and  practised  in  Chicago, 
believing  that  the  opposition  to  those  things  came  from 
episcopal  narrow-mindedness,  and  that  in  New  York  wider 
and  more  tolerant  councils  prevailed.  Had  I  thought  it 
right  to  give  up  I  should  have  stayed  where  I  was. 

"I  have  never  made  any  secret  of  my  beliefs  and 
practices.  I  supposed  that  you  yourself  were  aware  of 
them,  at  least  by  rumor.  If  you  will  recall  the  circum- 
stances, you  wrote  to  me  on  Jan.  10th,  1884,  about  my 
difficulty  with  Bp.  McLaren  and  my  attitude  to  the  canon 
law  of  the  church.  I  answered  your  letter  as  frankly  as  I 
knew  how,  telling  you  that  I  had  refused  to  yield  to  Bp. 
McLaren  in  the  matter  of  the  shortened  Eucharist  without 
communicants,  and  that  I  had  never  taught  or  practised 
anything  which  I  did  not  believe  had  the  sanction  of  'this 
Church.'  At  that  time,  I  was  notoriously  practising  Res- 


THE   CASE   OF   MR.   RITCHIE  169 

ervation  and  was  accustomed  publicly  to  announce 
'Benediction'  on  Maundy  Thursday  evening.  There  was 
not  a  hint  in  my  letter  that  I  had  made  any  mistake  in  my 
past  course,  or  that  I  was  unlikely  to  do  the  same  things 
in  New  York.  This  was  the  whole  of  our  correspondence 
upon  the  subject.  I  made  two  efforts  to  see  you  when  I 
first  came  to  New  York,  before  I  had  been  received  into  the 
diocese,  calling  at  your  office  at  hours  when  I  had  been  told 
I  could  see  you.  I  was  unsuccessful.  I  wrote  you  subse- 
quently that  if  you  would  name  any  day  and  hour  I  would 
call  upon  you.  But  you  gave  me  no  such  appointment. 
When  you  sent  for  me  to  come  and  see  you  at  Grace  House 
some  weeks  ago,  you  never  intimated  in  our  interview  that 
I  had  abused  your  confidence.  You  were  most  kind  and 
gracious  to  me,  and  you  promised  me  your  counsel  upon 
the  only  question  which  existed  in  my  mind  about  these 
matters.  It  was  whether  I  ought,  since  I  could  not  with  a 
good  conscience  yield  the  practices  to  which  you  objected, 
resign  my  parish  and  betake  myself  to  some  other  clerical 
occupation.  Your  letter  does  not  give  me  that  counsel, 
though  I  had  hoped  it  would.  May  I  not  still  ask  for  it? 
Though  I  am  in  the  36th  year  of  my  life,  and  the  14th  of 
my  ministry,  I  am  still,  as  you  affectionately  call  me,  your 
'young  brother,'  and  as  such  I  claim  that  counsel  which  you 
promised  but  have  not  given  me. 

"And  I  beseech  you  to  believe  that,  whatever  be  my 
faults,  I  have  not  added  this  to  them  of  '  abusing  the  confi- 
dence' of  one  who  has  been  so  kind  and  generous  to  me  as 
yourself." 

The  Bishop  apologized  for  calling  Mr.  Ritchie  "my 
young  brother."  It  was  a  favorite  expression  with  him. 
As  the  years  passed  and  he  became  considerably  the  senior 
of  many  of  his  clergy,  he  liked  to  say  "my  son."  Mr. 
Ritchie  looked  younger  than  his  age.  He  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  his  contemporaries,  the  Bishop  said,  "in  his 
freedom  from  the  scars  of  years. "  "  I  can  very  well  under- 
stand," wrote  the  Bishop,  "that  your  impression  as  to  the 


170  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

circumstances  under  which  you  came  into  this  diocese  may 
be  as  you  describe  them,  though  I  confess  I  cannot  under- 
stand how  the  impression  which  was  conveyed  to  me  was 
so  little  known  to  you.  It  is  true  that  you  called  upon  me 
twice  after  your  arrival  here ;  but  I  may  venture  to  remind 
you  that  the  mails  were  available  to  you  if  you  desired  an 
explicit  understanding  in  regard  to  anything  before  you 
accepted  your  call. 

"It  is  quite  true,  also,  that  no  pledge  of  any  kind  was 
exacted  from  you  before  you  came  here.  But  I  was  led  to 
understand  that  while  you  did  not  wish  to  be  humiliated 
by  promises,  which  being  exacted  from  you  might  be  used 
to  show  that  you  receded  from  positions  taken  by  you  in 
Chicago,  yet  if  you  were  given  an  honorable  opportunity 
of  retreat  nothing  would  be  done  by  you  that  would  make 
you  liable  to  criticism ;  in  other  words,  that  you  would  not 
repeat  the  offences  for  which  you  had  been  admonished  by 
your  bishop. 

"On  this  understanding  I  refrained  from  indicating  any 
disapproval  when  it  was  proposed  to  call  you,  though  I 
was  assured  that  I  had  only  to  intimate  that  I  preferred 
that  you  should  not  be  called  in  order  to  make  it  certain 
that  the  vestry  of  St.  Ignatius'  Church  should  abandon  its 
purpose  of  calling  you. 

"On  this  understanding,  no  less,  the  Bishop  of  Illinois 
withdrew  an  irregular  and  uncanonical  Letter  Dimissory 
which  I  could  not  have  accepted,  and  substituted  another 
that  I  could. 

"This,  then,  is  the  situation;  if  I  had  believed  that  you 
proposed  to  institute  the  unauthorized  service  to  which  I 
have  called  your  attention,  I  should  neither  have  acquiesced 
in  your  call  to  the  parish  of  which  you  are  now  rector,  nor 
to  your  transfer  to  this  diocese. 

"Under  these  circumstances,  I  confess  I  was  surprised 
that  you  should  refer  to  me  the  question,  whether  or  no, 
if  you  could  not  yield  to  my  request  to  discontinue  the 
services  to  which  I  called  your  attention,  you  should  retire 


THE   CASE   OF   MR.    RITCHIE  171 

from  your  present  post.  The  answer  to  that  question,  it 
seems  to  me,  ought  not  to  be  obscure  to  a  man  of  honor, 
and  you  will  forgive  me  if  I  say  that  he  ought  hardly  to 
shift  upon  another  the  responsibility  of  making  it  for  him. 

"Whatever  your  opinion  may  be  of  the  services  you  have 
instituted,  they  have  never  been  authorized  in  this  Church, 
and  they  involve  doctrinal  significances  so  grave  and  funda- 
mental that  it  is  simply  trifling  with  a  serious  subject  to  say 
of  them  (as  I  understand  has  been  said ;  not,  however,  let 
me  add,  by  you)  that  they  are  as  much  authorized  as  Sunday 
School  and  other  services  for  which  there  is  no  rubrical 
warrant.  You  would  be  surprised  if  you  could  know  who, 
and  how  many,  were  the  clergy  of  this  diocese  —  men  in 
general  sympathy  with  your  own  views  —  who  have  ex- 
pressed to  me  their  pain  and  surprise  at  what  you  were 
doing. 

"Ought  not  these  considerations  to  have  some  weight, 
with  you  in  deciding  what  you  should  do?  Or  is  it  true 
(forgive  me  for  a  frankness  which  most  surely  I  do  not  use 
to  wound)  that  what  has  been  said  of  you  by  every  one  who 
has  referred  to  you,  —  whether  those  who  knew  you  in 
your  seminary  days,  or  all  along  since  then  —  is  indeed 
descriptive  of  your  character,  and  that  your  unyielding 
and  invincible  obstinacy  is  such  that  having  once  taken 
a  position,  no  matter  what  it  may  be,  no  reasoning  nor  in- 
fluence can  induce  you  to  retire  from  it?" 

At  this  point  the  draft  of  the  letter,  as  it  is  preserved 
among  the  Bishop's  papers,  shows  several  cancelled  pages, 
but  it  ends  by  answering  the  question  to  which  Mr.  Ritchie 
had  desired  a  reply  :  concerning  the  matter  of  resigning 
the  parish,  "I  can  only  say,"  writes  the  Bishop,  "that  if 
I  were  in  your  place  I  should  not  hesitate  a  moment." 

In  spite  of  this  advice,  Mr.  Ritchie  hesitated.  He  dis- 
cussed the  Bishop's  letter  in  detail.  "You  write,  'I  cannot 
understand  how  the  impression  [that  the  practices  censured 
in  Chicago  would  not  be  repeated  here]  which  was  conveyed 
to  me  was  so  little  made  known  to  you/  I  think  I  can 


172  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

supply  the  explanation.  Those  who  were  responsible  for 
your  receiving  that  false  impression  knew  well  enough  that 
they  could  never  get  my  consent  to  any  such  compact. 
Therefore  they  purposely  kept  it  from  me,  hoping  that 
when  I  had  become  settled  in  my  new  parish  they  could 
prevail  on  me  to  make  the  best  of  my  position  by  accepting 
the  terms  of  an  agreement  made  in  my  name,  but  to  which 
I  had  never  been  a  party.  The  appeal  to  my  honor  in  such 
a  case  has  small  weight  with  me,  since  my  honor  is  in  no 
way  involved  in  the  matter.  I  should  never  have  taken 
the  first  step  toward  accepting  St.  Ignatius'  Parish  had  I 
imagined  I  was  to  become  morally  bound  by  any  such 
understanding. 

"Again  you  write,  apropos  of  my  two  unsuccessful  calls 
upon  you  ;  '  I  may  venture  to  remind  you  that  the  mails  were 
open  to  you,  if  you  desired  an  explicit  understanding  in 
regard  to  anything  before  you  accepted  your  call.7  I  con- 
fess such  a  desire  never  occurred  to  me.  I  did  not  suppose 
there  was  room  for  any  misunderstanding  about  my  opinions 
and  practices.  If  any  one  fancied  I  came  to  New  York  to 
find  'an  honorable  opportunity  of  retreat'  from  positions 
taken  by  me  in  Chicago,  he  must  have  been  as  unacquainted 
with  my  character  as  with  my  record. 

"Still  further  you  write,  'I  confess  I  was  surprised  that 
you  should  refer  to  me  the  question  whether  or  no,  if  you 
could  not  yield  to  my  request  to  discontinue  the  services 
to  which  I  have  referred,  you  should  retire  from  your  pres- 
ent post.'  And  again,  'A  man  of  honor  ought  hardly  to 
seek  to  shift  the  responsibility  for  making  it'  [an  answer  to 
the  above  question]  'upon  another.'  If  you  will  call  it  to 
mind,  my  dear  Bishop,  you  yourself,  in  our  interview  at 
Grace  House,  voluntered  to  give  me  your  counsel  upon  the 
question  not  at  any  suggestion  of  mine,  either.  I  thought 
it  very  kind  of  you  to  offer  me  your  counsel,  and  very  gladly 
said  I  should  be  grateful  for  it.  Is  it  strange  that  I  should 
ask  you  for  what  you  promised  me  ?  It  is  not  I  who  seek  to 
shift  responsibility  in  this  matter. 


THE   CASE   OF   MR.    RITCHIE  173 

"However,  you  give  me  your  counsel  quite  unmistak- 
ably in  the  last  part  of  your  letter  when  you  write,  'If  I 
were  in  your  place  I  can  only  say  I  should  not  hesitate  for 
a  moment.'  That  is  strong  counsel,  and  yet  I  do  hesitate. 
A  man  who  has  assumed  in  canonical  fashion  the  cure  of 
souls  may  not  lightly  give  it  up.  Are  there  reasons?  All 
that  you  have  given  me  are  :  that  certain  services  at  St. 
Ignatius  are  'in  my  (your)  judgment  unauthorized  and  un- 
lawful ; '  the  request  that  I  would  discontinue  the  same ; 
the  counsel  that  were  you  in  my  place  you  would  resign 
your  post  if  you  could  not  comply  with  your  Bishop's  re- 
quest. 

"For  your  'judgment'  I  have  the  greatest  respect. 
Still,  it  is  not  the  law  of  the  Church,  and  even  bishops 
differ  very  widely  in  their  judgment  upon  many  subjects. 
With  any  'request'  of  yours  I  would  gladly  comply  save 
where  sense  of  duty  compels  me  to  refuse.  For  your 
counsel  that  you  would  act  in  a  certain  way  if  in  my  cir- 
cumstances, I  am  very  grateful.  Unfortunately,  one  man's 
private  judgment  in  such  matters  does  not  always  approve 
itself  to  the  private  judgment  of  another.  For  a  number 
of  years  past  these  censured  services  have  been  under 
criticism,  but  no  one  who  has  criticised  them,  and  there 
have  been  bishops  among  the  number,  has  pretended  to 
allege  any  rubric  or  canon  of  the  Church  against  them,  or 
anything  more  than  his  own  opinion  in  their  lawfulness. 
Their  lawfulness  or  unlawfulness  is  a  matter  of  fact,  and  in 
matters  of  fact  even  one  in  lower  office  may  judge  as  com- 
petently as  his  superior.  When  any  law  of  the  Church  can 
be  shown  against  any  of  the  services  at  St.  Ignatius  I  will 
cheerfully  yield  to  it.  Until  that  time  I  am  purposed  to 
continue  in  my  present  course  even  though  the  lambs  of 
the  flock  be  compelled  to  seek  in  other  parish  churches  than 
their  own  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost  at  your  hands." 

With  this  courteously  uncompromising  communication, 
whose  reasoning  would  have  justified  the  use  at  St.  Ignatius 
of  ceremonies  of  adoration  of  the  sun,  moon  and  stars,  or 


174  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

any  other  ritual  not  explicitly  forbidden  in  the  rubrics  or 
the  canons,  the  correspondence  for  the  moment  ended. 

"Six  tall  tapers  and  a  dozen  smaller  ones  burned  around 
the  shrine  in  the  Church  of  St.  Ignatius  this  morning/' 
said  a  reporter,  "and  two  lighted  candles  a  yard  long  stood 
on  the  floor  beneath  the  high  altar.  Rev.  Arthur  Ritchie, 
in  a  white  gown,  stood  under  the  big  wooden  cross  and 
preached.  He  made  no  reference  to  his  troubles  with 
Assistant  Bishop  Potter.  After  the  sermon,  boys  in  white 
stoles  came  out  of  the  sacristy  and  swung  incense  around 
while  Mr.  Ritchie  in  a  melodious  monotone  chanted  the 
Episcopal  service.  A  bell  tolled  as  he  prayed.  After  the 
services  were  over  Mr.  Ritchie  said  that  he  was  certain  he 
would  not  be  tried  for  his  departure  from  the  customary 
church  methods,  and  that  he  expected  Bishop  Potter  to 
come  around  soon  and  confirm  the  candidates.  Members 
of  the  congregation  said  they  were  perfectly  satisfied  with 
Mr.  Ritchie,  and  that  none  of  them  would  go  to  any  church 
to  be  confirmed.  They  think  that  Bishop  Potter  will  soon 
appear  in  St.  Ignatius." 

At  this  juncture  there  came  unexpectedly  upon  the  scene 
the  Bishop  of  Springfield  and  the  Bishop  of  Fond  du  Lac. 

"Pray  do  not  gratify  my  friend,  Arthur  Ritchie,"  wrote 
Bishop  Grafton  of  Fond  du  Lac,  "  by  bringing  him  to  trial. 
Your  wisdom,  I  am  sure,  sees  the  many  reasons  against 
such  a  course.  Our  low-church  brethren  should  be  very 
grateful  to  you  for  not  suppressing  him,  as  he  is  most 
successful  in  hindering  the  growth  of  high-churchmanship. 
Just  now  he  seems  to  be  riding  for  a  fall.  For  many  years 
I  have  felt  the  injury  done  to  real  spirituality  by  excessive 
ceremonial.  The  efforts  made  to  check  it  legislatively 
have  heretofore  been  of  such  a  character,  or  have  been 
brought  forward  in  such  a  way,  as  to  compel  all  high-church- 
men to  combine  in  resistance  by  way  of  self-preservation. 
It  would,  I  think,  be  easy  by  legislation  which  in  our  House 
would  be  practically  unanimous  to  put  a  check  on  its  devel- 
opment. Let  our  canons  on  public  worship  or  use  of  the 


THE   CASE   OF   MR.   RITCHIE  175 

Prayer  Book  contain  two  provisions  —  A  clause  that  no 
one  shall  assist  at  the  altar  or  take  any  part  in  that  service 
unless  he  be  in  holy  orders,  or  be  licensed  to  serve  by  the 
bishop.  This  would,  if  the  bishop  so  desired,  do  away 
with  all  acolytes  or  servers,  and  without  them  there  can  be 
no  elaborate  ceremonial ;  the  churches  where  there  are  more 
then  two  priests  being  very  few.  Also  make  it  obligatory 
to  say  the  whole  of  the  Communion  Service  and  in  the  order 
given,  with  only  such  omissions  as  are  explicitly  allowed  to 
be  omitted." 

Bishop  Seymour  wrote  at  the  same  time  to  the  Rev. 
S.  H.  Gurteen,  rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Springfield, 
Illinois,  —  a  church  which  was  used  as  the  pro-cathedral 
of  the  diocese  —  to  call  his  attention  to  the  statement  of 
Mr.  Ritchie  that  the  Blessed  Sacrament  was  "reserved"  in 
that  church  with  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  the  bishop. 
"Without  reference,"  he  said,  "to  the  propriety  or  delicacy 
of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Ritchie's  dragging  me  into  his  issue  with  the 
diocesan  authorities  of  New  York,  it  is  due  to  myself  and 
the  diocese  of  Springfield  for  me  to  state  to  you  that  accord- 
ing to  my  present  understanding  of  the  law  of  our  Church 
such  reservation  for  purposes  of  worship  cannot  be  success- 
fully maintained.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  abstract 
question,  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong  to  reserve  the  Sacred 
Elements  for  purposes  of  worship,  but  only  as  to  the 
legality  of  doing  so  by  us  with  our  Prayer  Book.  In  refer- 
ence to  this  point,  I  am  as  at  present  informed  clearly  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  not. 

"I  do  not  know,  my  dear  brother,  that  you  have  so  re- 
served the  Blessed  Sacrament.  I  had  reason  to  believe 
that  for  the  sake  of  the  sick  you  did  from  time  to  time 
reserve  the  Blessed  Elements  on  your  altar,  but  I  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  matter  as  a  fact.  I  should  be  willing  to 
grant  under  certain  conditions  this  indulgence  since  I  can 
appreciate  what  a  boon  it  would  be  to  the  Parish  Priest, 
but  I  would  be  sorry  to  learn  that  in  any  case  such  a  reser- 
vation for  such  a  specific  purpose  was  taken  advantage  of 


176  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

to  bring  in  a  practice  which,  however  right  and  salutary  it 
may  be  in  itself,  is  in  my  humble  opinion,  as  I  am  at  present 
informed,  clearly  in  conflict  with  the  law  of  our  Church 
which  you  and  I  have  pledged  ourselves  to  obey." 

Mr.  Gurteen  replied  that  the  Sacrament  had  never  been 
reserved  in  St.  Paul's  for  purposes  of  worship,  and  Bishop 
Seymour  sent  copies  of  both  letters  to  Bishop  Potter,  sug- 
gesting that  they  be  put  in  some  safe  place  "as  your  pro- 
tection and  mine  against  the  misapprehensions  of  our 
brother,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Ritchie/'  He  added  a  hope  that 
this  was  the  end  of  the  matter  so  far  as  he  was  concerned, 
saying  that  he  had  "other  and  transcendently  more  impor- 
tant work"  to  do. 

It  was  not  quite  the  end.  Mr.  Ritchie  sent  to  Bishop 
Potter  copies  of  what  he  called  a  "stupid  correspondence" 
between  Bishop  Seymour  and  himself.  Mr.  Ritchie,  in 
these  letters,  acknowledged  that  he  had  said  to  a  reporter, 
"I  know  of  no  other  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  where 
the  ceremony  of  the  Benediction  with  the  monstrance  and 
the  wafer  is  practised ;  but  in  the  Pro-Cathedral  at  Spring- 
field, Illinois,  the  light  is  constantly  burning  over  the  Sacra- 
ment, with  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  Bishop  Seymour, 
the  head  of  the  diocese."  Bishop  Seymour,  replying  that 
"the  light  is  not  kept  constantly  burning,  but  only  when 
the  Sacred  Elements  are  reserved  for  the  purposes  specified 
by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Gurteen,"  drew  attention  to  an  evil  which 
is  far  too  prevalent  on  the  part  of  zealous  men  of  all  parties 
in  the  Church,  who  in  their  eagerness  to  accomplish  what 
they  believe  to  be  God's  truth  and  cherish  as  of  supreme 
importance,  are  led  on  unconsciously  to  themselves  to  adopt 
methods  of  indirection,  evasion  and  sophistical  reasoning, 
which  in  their  normal  condition  they  would  never  employ." 
There  was  some  further  discussion  back  and  forth  as  to  the 
exact  meaning  of  the  word  "  constantly, "  and  as  to  the  exact 
amount  of  Bishop  Seymour's  "knowledge  and  consent!" 
Bishop  Seymour  sent  copies  again  to  Bishop  Potter,  saying, 
"This  is  the  most  extraordinary  experience  I  ever  had  !" 


THE    CASE    OF   MR.    RITCHIE  177 

However,  on  May  28th;  Mr.  Ritchie  wrote  to  Dr.  Richey, 
"You  know  me  well  enough  to  believe  that  I  am  sincerely 
sorry  for  the  unhappy  breach  which  has  opened  between 
Bishop  Potter  and  myself ;  and  I  have  wondered  whether 
I  could  not  make  such  concession  as  would  be  satisfactory 
to  him  without  sacrificing  principle  on  my  part.  In  all 
frankness  I  would  propose  to  you  the  following  plan,  and 
if  you  think  it  worth  presenting  to  the  Bishop  I  shall  be 
happy  to  have  you  communicate  it  to  him  in  such  way  as 
you  may  deem  best. 

"The  Bishop  regards  our  Benediction  Service  as  illegal. 
I  cannot  see  that  it  is  so.  But  if  the  question  of  legality 
could  be  for  the  present  waived,  and  the  Bishop  should  ask 
me  to  discontinue  the  Benediction  Service  for  the  sake  of 
peace  and  the  avoidance  of  scandal,  I  would  gladly  comply 
with  his  wish,  if  he  could  then  feel  it  possible  to  come  to 
St.  Ignatius  to  confirm." 

This  mediation  was  successful,  and  in  June  Mr.  Ritchie 
wrote  to  the  bishop,  "It  is  a  matter  of  much  unhappiness 
to  me  that  I  should  seem,  in  my  course  at  St.  Ignatius,  to 
be  in  any  defiance  of  your  paternal  authority.  I  sincerely 
desire  to  be  loyal  to  you,  and  to  bow  to  your  godly  judgment. 
I  therefore  propose  to  discontinue  the  Benediction  Service, 
and  not  to  resume  it  without  first  obtaining  your  consent  to 
my  doing  so ;  in  the  hope  that  you  will  then  feel  at  liberty 
to  visit  St.  Ignatius'  Church,  and  to  recognize  me  as  a  loyal 
and  dutiful  priest  of  your  diocese."  The  Benediction 
Service  being  the  heart  of  Mr.  Ritchie's  offence,  including  as 
it  did  the  act  of  reservation  and  the  accompanying  cere- 
monies, Bishop  Potter  immediately  replied,  "Your  note  of 
the  12th  inst.  has  just  been  handed  to  me,  and  I  thank  you 
for  the  assurance  which  it  gives  me,  and  for  the  terms  in 
which  that  assurance  is  given.  I  shall  gladly  hold  myself 
in  readiness  to  comply  with  your  request  as  to  a  Visitation, 
and  so  soon  as  I  can  name  a  day  which  will  meet  with  your 
convenience  and  that  of  your  people  (say  between  the  24th 
and  27th  inst.,  as  my  appointments  take  me  out  of  town 


178  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

between  now  and  then)  I  shall  hope  to  come  to  you.  Mean- 
time believe  me,  dear  Mr.  Ritchie,  with  earnest  prayers  that 
God  may  guide  and  bless  you  and  the  people  committed 
to  your  charge,  very  faithfully  yours." 

"I  think  you  know,"  wrote  the  Bishop  in  a  later  letter, 
"that  I  appreciate  very  warmly  your  conduct  in  regard  to 
the  Service  of  Benediction,  etc.,  and  I  cannot  speak  too 
strongly  of  my  admiration  of  your  reserve  and  self-restraint 
under  all  the  newspaper  and  other  criticism  which  you  have 
experienced.  In  this  you  are  an  example  to  all  of  us,  and  I 
honor  you  for  it."  Referring  to  the  visitation  which  he 
had  made  to  St.  Ignatius'  Church  (on  the  evening  of  June 
25th,  1885)  he  added,  "I  want  to  say  that  I  shall  not  soon 
forget  the  cordial  and  cheerful  courtesy  with  which  you 
bore  yourself  on  that  occasion  which,  without  a  single  overt 
act,  you  might  have  made  very  trying  and  painful  to  your 
visitor.  Your  kindly  temper,  and  the  bearing  of  your 
people,  was  something  that  made  the  whole  experience  one 
to  be  most  pleasantly  and  gratifyingly  remembered." 

The  New  York  Tribune  for  June  16th,  1885,  said  in  an 
editorial  paragraph,  "Assistant  Bishop  Potter  is  fast  gaining 
reputation  as  an  ecclesiastical  diplomat.  Having  quietly, 
but  firmly,  repressed  the  too  liberal  utterances  of  the  Rev. 
R.  Heber  Newton,  he  has  now  persuaded  the  rector  of  St. 
Ignatius'  Church  to  give  up  the  Benediction  Service,  which, 
evangelical  churchmen  hold,  savors  of  Rome.  Mr.  Ritchie 
promises  that  he  will  do  so  no  more,  and  the  Bishop  has 
fixed  a  day  for  administering  confirmation  in  that  parish. 
A  less  careful,  or  a  tactless  bishop  would  long  ago  have 
brought  scandal  on  the  church  by  hasty  or  arbitrary  action 
at  All  Souls'  or  St.  Ignatius'.  The  wisdom  of  Dr.  Potter's 
course  is  manifest." 

Later,  in  1899,  after  a  renewal  of  the  former  situation, 
Mr.  Ritchie  wrote,  "I  think  it  my  duty  to  inform  you  that 
beginning  next  Sunday,  September  10th,  I  purpose  to 
comply  literally  with  the  rubrics  of  the  Communion  Service1, 
no  longer  omitting  those  parts  of  the  office  which  I  have  been 


THE    CASE    OF   MR.    RITCHIE  179 

in  the  habit  of  omitting  hitherto.  Also,  that  since  last 
Easter  I  have  given  up  the  benediction  of  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment after  evensong  on  Sunday  afternoons."  And  later, 
he  wrote,  "It  is  a  great  happiness  to  me  to  feel  that  I  am 
no  longer  out  of  ..touch  with  my  Bishop  and  a  very  large 
proportion  of  my  brethren.  I  hope  that  I  may  never  give 
your  kind  heart  any  trouble  in  the  future." 

Mr.  Ritchie,  looking  over  these  old  letters  for  the  purpose 
of  this  book,  says  (1915),  "The  later  years  of  my  association 
with  Bishop  Potter  were  full  of  the  most  gracious  kindliness 
on  his  part,  and  of  many  delightful  memories.  He  was  of 
the  greatest  help  to  us  in  our  building  of  the  new  St.  Ig- 
natius' Church  up-town.  Indeed,  but  for  his  active  in- 
tervention on  our  behalf,  we  could  not  have  attained  our 
purpose." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE    ADVENT   MISSION 

1885 

THE  cases  of  Dr.  Newton  and  Father  Huntington  and 
Mr.  Ritchie  occupied  much  of  Bishop  Potter's  time  and 
considerably  augmented  his  correspondence  during  1884 
and  1885.  They  called  for  the  exercise  of  his  administra- 
tive wisdom.  They  illustrate  the  difficulties  of  keeping 
the  peace  in  a  communion  composed  of  markedly  different 
people,  where  extreme  broad  churchmen  must  be  kept  in 
hand  on  the  one  side  and  extreme  high  churchmen  on  the 
other.  Meanwhile,  "  other  and  transcendently  more  im- 
portant "  matters  were  engaging  the  attention  of  the  Assist- 
ant Bishop. 

On  Saturday,  February  23d,  1884,  he  officiated  in  Holy 
Trinity  Church  at  the  funeral  of  Lieut.  George  Do  Long 
and  six  of  his  associates  in  the  expedition  of  the  Jeanctte. 
The  tragedy  in  which  these  men  had  played  heroic  parts, 
the  crushing  of  their  ships  in  the  arctic  ice,  their  long 
journey  over  fields  of  snow  to  the  delta  of  the  Lena  River 
in  Siberia,  and  their  slow  starvation  there  while  De  Long, 
the  last  survivor,  kept  the  journal  of  their  fate  to  the  very 
day  of  his  death,  had  impressed  the  imagination  of  the 
people.  The  funeral  was  under  the  direction  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States.  Bishop  Potter  made  an  address. 
He  praised  the  heroisms  which  shine  on  other  fields  than 
those  of  battles. 

He  was  concerned  about  the  small  salaries  of  many  of 
his  clerical  brethren.  An  article  of  his  in  the  Church 
Review,  on  "  Ministerial  Support,"  aroused  an  extended 
discussion.  He  proposed  that  such  of  the  bishops  and 

180 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  181 

clergy  as  had  incomes  amounting  to  and  over  $3000  should 
give  two-and-one-half  per  cent  of  such  income  annually 
to  be  divided  among  the  two  thousand  clergy,  more  or  less, 
whose  salaries  did  not  amount  to  $1000  a  year.  The  plan 
was  discussed  by  the  House  of  Bishops,  but  without  any 
resulting  action.  A  correspondent  of  the  Churchman  sug- 
gested that  Bishop  Potter  "send  at  once  to  a  hundred  or  so 
clergymen  known  to  have  incomes  exceeding  $3000  a  year 
(if  so  many  can  be  found)  and  ask  their  pledge  to  pay  for 
five  years  two-and-one-half  per  cent  of  their  income  for 
the  purpose  indicated.  The  church  would  await  with  a 
good  deal  of  interest,  not  to  say  curiosity,  the  result." 
Bishop  Coxe  observed  that  men  who  had  large  salaries  had 
also  large  expenses.  They  must  pay  $800  for  house  rent, 
to  take  but  a  single  item.  He  was  glad,  he  said,  that  "the 
bishop  had  startled  the  church  by  asking  the  impoverished 
clergy,  surrounded  by  an  opulent  laity,  to  set  the  example 
of  properly  providing  for  their  brethren  by  further  im- 
poverishment." In  western  New  York  they  were  setting 
a  minimum  wage  of  $1000,  and  telling  the  parishes  which 
paid  less  to  credit  the  minister  with  the  balance  as  his 
cash  contribution  to  the  annual  expenses. 

Bishop  Potter  told  the  Diocesan  Convention  in  Septem- 
ber, 1884,  that  in  acquainting  himself  with  the  rural  parts  of 
the  diocese  he  was  impressed  with  the  need  of  grouping  the 
clergy  under  experienced  direction.  "We  send  to  these 
feeble  parishes  and  missionary  stations  a  deacon,  young 
and  inexperienced,  or  a  clergyman  with  riper  capabilities 
and  fitted  for  larger  tasks.  In  either  case  the  result  is  apt 
to  be  the  same.  The  inexperienced  deacon,  left  without 
adequate  guidance  during  a  period  which  implicitly,  if  not 
explicitly,  contemplates  it,  blunders,  freezes  in  his  unvisited 
isolation,  and  escapes  as  soon  as  he  can.  Or,  if  an  older 
and  riper  man,  he  rusts  from  the  disuse  of  powers  for  which 
there  is  no  sufficient  employment,  and  suffers  meantime 
from  inadequate  support.  And  all  the  time  the  Church 
is  training  men  at  her  own  charges,  whose  services  ought, 


182  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

for  a  time,  at  any  rate,  to  be  at  her  absolute  disposal. 
And  if  they  were,  and  if  we  could  group  together  three 
or  four  deacons  at  two  or  three  centres  in  each  county 
or  convocation,  who  should  live  under  the  roof  of  the  Arch- 
deacon or  Rural  Dean,  or  whatever  else  such  a  person  might 
be  called  —  the  official  head  being  a  man  of  ripe  years  and 
paternal  spirit  (of  whom  the  Church  in  this  diocese,  thank 
God,  is  not  poor)  —  we  should  then  have  a  system  which 
would  include : 

(a)    Training  to  those  who  are  part  of  it ; 

(6)    Activity  and  enthusiasm  in  the  service  rendered ; 

(c)  Judicious  distribution  of  labor  proportioned  to  need 
and  opportunity ; 

(d)  Oversight,    constant   and   personal,    of   a  competent 
eye  and  mind  ;   and 

(e)  Facility  in  maintenance  proportioned  to  the  needs 
of  the  work. 

"As  it  is,"  he  added,  "there  is  not  one  of  us,  I  think, 
who  will  care  to  deny  that  expenditure  is  ill  apportioned, 
work  ill-distributed,  and  effort  insufficiently  guided  and 
supervised." 

In  October,  at  the  Church  Congress  in  Detroit,  Bishop 
Potter  made  the  address  at  the  celebration  of  the  Holy 
Communion  with  which  the  session  was  begun.  "It  is 
well,"  he  said,  "that  there  should  be  an  arena  where  the 
utmost  openness  and  candor  of  discussion  should  prevail, 
and  where  the  unity  should  be  rather  that  of  one  purpose, 
to  seek  and  to  find  the  truth,  and  the  peace  that  of  a  large 
charity  than  of  a  restricted  and  enforced  uniformity.  The 
church  has  many  wants  to-day,  but  none  of  them  is  more 
real  than  the  want  of  a  tribune  of  the  people,  where  voices, 
diverse  it  may  be,  but  honest  and  reverent,  may  be  heard, 
and  when  themes  not  always  accounted  appropriate  to  the 
pulpit  may  be  frankly  and  courageously  discussed." 

One  of  the  subjects  appointed  for  debate  was  "The 
Mission,  and  Evangelistic  Preaching."  Dr.  Rainsford 
opened  the  discussion,  and  was  followed  by  Dr.  Donald. 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  183 

It  was  a  matter  of  immediate  interest  to  the  clergy  and 
people  of  New  York.  For  the  space  of  more  than  a  year 
plans  had  been  in  progress  for  a  definite  and  concerted  re- 
vival of  religion  in  the  city.  A  committee  had  been  ap- 
pointed in  June,  1883.  There  had  been  many  conferences. 
Several  times  in  the  bishop's  official  journal  appears  the 
entry,  "Monday,  in  Grace  Church  Chantry,  New  York,  I 
delivered  an  address  to  a  number  of  the  clergy  of  the  dio- 
cese, and  celebrated  the  Holy  Communion."  There  were 
preparatory  meetings,  gradually  making  ready  for  a  mis- 
sion to  be  held  in  the  Advent  season  of  1885. 

From  the  old-fashioned  "revival"  the  Episcopal  Church 
had  stood  aloof.  The  most  successful  of  all  revival 
preachers,  the  Rev.  George  Whitefield,  had,  indeed,  been  a 
clergyman  of  her  own  communion,  but  in  the  great  awaken- 
ing under  his  evangelistic  ministry  the  Church  had  no  part. 
The  idea  of  the  naturalness  of  the  Christian  life  and  of  a 
quiet  growth  in  grace  by  processes  of  religious  nurture  had 
prevailed  over  the  idea  of  conversion.  It  was  held  by 
churchmen  that  Whitefield  and  Edwards  and  Wesley  had 
invented  out  of  their  own  experience  a  new  way  of  becom- 
ing a  Christian.  Churchmen  believed  that  the  old  way 
was  better,  the  old  advance  from  sacrament  to  sacrament 
-  from  baptism  to  confirmation,  from  confirmation  to 
the  Holy  Communion.  The  Episcopal  Church  had  been 
largely  recruited  by  the  accession  of  sober  persons  who  de- 
sired to  escape  the  disturbing  excitement  of  revivals. 

It  was  plain,  however,  that  the  orderly  procedure  of  the 
church  failed  to  deal  adequately  with  the  indifferent,  and 
that  it  was  not  sufficiently  effective  in  reaching  sinners. 
Earnest  people  felt  the  need  of  other  methods.  They  were 
even  disposed,  as  the  sharpness  of  old  contentions  became 
dulled,  to  learn  some  lessons  from  the  revival.  In  England, 
for  some  time,  clergymen  of  the  Established  Church  had 
been  conducting  revivals,  under  the  name  of  missions. 
The  idea  was  in  harmony  with  Bishop  Potter's  constant 
endeavor  to  deepen  the  spiritual  life.  It  fitted  in  with  the 


184  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

"retreats"  and  "quiet  days"  which  he  had  conducted  with 
excellent  results.  It  was  determined  to  import  a  successful 
English  Missioner,  and  under  his  direction  to  undertake  a 
general  revival  in  the  Episcopal  parishes  of  New  York. 

In  May,  1885,  Bishop  Potter  issued  a  pastoral  letter  to  the 
clergy  of  New  York,  accompanying  a  list  of  twenty  reasons 
proposed  by  the  Mission  Committee  for  holding  such  a 
series  of  services.  "I  desire/'  he  wrote,  "to  renew  the 
expression  of  my  deep  interest  in  this  proposed  effort  to 
quicken  the  spiritual  life  of  our  parishes,  to  arouse  the  care- 
less, and  to  draw  the  attention  of  thoughtful  men  and  women 
to  the  grave  and  almost  menacing  problems  which  to-day 
confront  us  in  New  York.  I  am  personally  grateful  to 
those  of  the  clergy  who  have  turned  their  attention  to  this 
matter,  and  who,  during  the  past  winter,  have  met  regularly 
and  very  frequently  for  the  purposes  of  devotion  and  con- 
ference, and  I  am  glad  to  know  that  your  plans  have, 
thus  far,  been  so  happily  matured. 

"Whatever  may  come  of  the  mission,  you  who  have 
been  drawn  so  closely  together  in  maturing  its  details  have 
found,  I  am  sure,  the  great  blessing  which  comes  from 
communing  together  for  a  lofty  purpose,  and  in  a  spirit 
of  mutual  trust  and  regard.  But  I  am  greatly  hopeful 
that  much  more  than  this  will  follow  from  your  labors,  and 
that  we  may  be  able,  by  God's  blessing,  to  do  something 
to  break  up  the  crust  of  a  routine  which  hardens  all  too 
easily  into  narrow  aims  and  more  or  less  mechanical  methods. 
We  may  well  be  afraid  of  a  faith  in  mere  emotionalism, 
mistaking  excitement  for  profound  moral  conviction,  and 
exalted  feelings  for  a  deep,  settled  purpose.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  also  reason  to  dread  lest  the  use  of 
accustomed  means  shall  content  us  with  perfunctory  ser- 
vice and  superficial  results.  The  evils  of  revivalism  are 
very  real,  and,  in  this  land,  most  lamentable ;  but  the 
church's  system,  which  provides  her  Lenten  and  Advent 
fasts  and  penitential  offices,  implies  that  there  are  times 
when  we  may  well  'cry  aloud  and  spare  not,'  and  when 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  185 

the  warning  of  the  preacher  of  righteousness,  with  some- 
thing of  the  old  prophetic  fervor  and  plainness  of  utter- 
ance, may  wisely  be  heard  among  us.  There  are  facts, 
stern,  appalling,  and  most  close  at  hand,  which  concern 
profoundly  those  who  are  living  at  ease  in  sin,  those  who 
have  the  stewardship  of  wealth  and  influence,  those  who 
are  astray  in  the  wilderness  of  doubt  and  unbelief  —  the 
weary  and  over-worked  and  heavy-laden,  the  drunkard 
and  the  outcast.  And  if  any  clear  and  searching  voice  can 
help  to  bring  these  facts  home  to  us,  can  arouse  us  to  the 
meaning  of  duty  and  the  message  of  God,  can  comfort 
sorrowful  hearts  and  help  to  lift  up  those  who  are  fallen, 
we  may  well  welcome  it,  from  whatever  quarter  it  may 
come. 

"I  am  glad,  therefore,  that  you  have  asked  the  aid  in 
this  work  of  brethren  from  beyond  the  sea,  and  from  other 
parts  of  our  own  church,  and  that  they  are  coming  to  help 
us.  For  one,  I  shall  welcome  them  with  grateful  and  af- 
fectionate interest  and  regard ;  and  the  whole  church  in 
this  diocese  will  pray,  I  am  sure,  that  God  may  give  them 
courage  and  strength  and  wisdom  for  their  work. 

"In  that  work  it  is  gratifying  to  know  that  a  goodly 
number  of  the  parishes  in  New  York  are  already  prepared 
to  unite.  If  there  are  others  who,  as  yet,  do  not  see  their 
way  to  take  part  in  what  must  honestly  be  regarded  as  an 
experiment,  I  am  sure  that  you,  and  those  who  are  to  be 
associated  with  you,  will  not  fault  or  misjudge  their  reserve. 
And  I  am  no  less  sure,  on  the  other  hand,  that,  if  they  cannot 
formally  cooperate  in  their  effort,  such  brethren  will  not 
withhold  from  you  their  prayers  and  best  wishes  for  the 
true  and  lasting  success  of  your  labors." 

Thus  he  commended  them  to  God  and  to  the  word  of 
His  grace. 

He  referred  again  to  the  mission  in  his  annual  address  in 
September,  1885.  "Unlike  many  of  my  brethren  who  hear 
me,"  he  said,  "I  have  had  no  opportunity  to  observe  the 
actual  workings  of  a  mission  in  our  Mother  Church,  and 


186  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

have  no  other  knowledge  of  its  methods  and  results  than 
is  within  the  reach  of  churchmen  anywhere.  But  there 
are  those  whose  knowledge  of  such  methods  is  personal 
and  extensive,  there  are  others  whose  enquiries  in  regard 
to  them  have  been  minute  and  thorough,  and  there  are 
others  still,  of  whom  I  am  one,  who  are  profoundly  sensible 
with  what  indifferent  success  after  all  we  are  doing  the  work 
to  which  our  Master  has  commissioned  us.  And  just  here, 
I  may  venture  to  urge  a  consideration  drawn  from  our 
common  experience  the  force  of  which,  I  think,  will  hardly 
be  disputed.  Xo  priest  or  pastor,  no  devout  layman 
has  ever  passed  through  the  season  of  Lent  without  at 
some  time  or  other  owning  how  special  efforts  to  search 
out  and  arouse  the  careless  have  reacted  in  lasting  blessing 
to  his  own  soul.  A  sermon  to  the  unconverted,  a  peniten- 
tial service  for  the  erring  or  the  indifferent,  an  effort  to 
recover  to  the  reverent  use  of  the  ordinances  and  sacraments 
of  the  Church  those  who  have  long  neglected  them,  these 
may  not  always  be  successful ;  but  one  thing  we  do  know  — 
that  they  do  not  leave  us  where  they  found  us,  and  that 
more  than  once  it  has  happened  that  whether  those  for 
whom  we  have  striven  have  turned  and  repented  or  no, 
God  has  left  a  blessing  behind  Him.  The  Cross  has  come 
to  be  a  more  real  thing  to  us,  and  its  august  and  awful 
sacrifice  a  mightier  power  in  our  own  lives. 

"It  may  easily  be  that  in  the  proposed  Mission  in  New 
York  all  that  we  hope  or  aim  to  effect  may  not  be  accom- 
plished. It  may  easily  be,  and  of  this  I  think  it  right  to 
make  the  most  candid  and  unreserved  mention,  that 
methods  that  are  adapted  to  another  ecclesiastical  merid- 
ian are  intrinsically  unsuited  to  our  own.  It  may  also 
be  that,  in  so  far  as  they  have  any  distinctive  quality  and 
value  they  have  already  been  abundantly  tested  in  this 
land  —  though  at  this  point  we  may  wisely  remember  that 
they  have  never  heretofore  been  employed  (as  they  will 
be  in  this  case)  by  those  whose  training  and  taste,  so  far 
as  the  uses  of  religious  excitement  arc  concerned,  have  so 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  187 

taught  them  to  be  impatient  of  mere  emotionalism. 
Nevertheless,  when  all  this  is  said  the  single  fact  remains, 
that  never  before  has  so  united,  so  extensive  and  so  many- 
sided  an  effort  been  proposed  among  us  to  enlist  all  classes 
of  church  people,  and  every  individual  layman  and  lay- 
woman  of  whatever  gift  and  opportunity  in  one  common 
effort  to  lift  up  the  spiritual  level  of  our  people,  and  to 
send  us  all  forth  together  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  is 
lost.  And  therefore  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  believe  that, 
however  little  a  mission  may  realize  our  immediate  hopes 
as  to  the  rescue  of  those  for  whose  salvation  it  is  primarily 
intended,  it  will  not  issue  in  a  general  quickening  of  our 
own  spiritual  life,  and  real  awakening  of  our  united 
activities. 

"For  that  awakening  the  cause  of  God  stands  waiting, 
and  if  I  could  repeat  to  you  here  what  has  been  told  to  me 
by  those  who  have  been  conferring  together  during  the 
past  year,  of  that  quickening  and  deepening  of  their  own 
spiritual  life  which  has  come  to  them  from  those  Monday 
celebrations  of  the  Holy  Communion  in  the  early  morning, 
with  the  subsequent  meetings  for  prayer  and  conference 
-  how  hearts  have  been  stirred  and  warmed,  how  mutual 
suspicions  and  prejudices  have  been  dispelled,  how  the 
gravity  of  a  great  crisis  in  the  church's  life  has  dawned 
upon  them,  how  the  need  of  making  our  common  Chris- 
tianity a  more  real  and  helpful  thing  to  that  great  multi- 
tude who  now  disdain  its  influences  or  neglect  its  ordinances, 
how  the  work  of  the  ministry  and  the  tremendous  responsi- 
bilities of  Christian  discipleship  in  these  days  and  in  this 
city  —  how  all  these  have  been  brought  back  to  them,  I 
am  sure  you  would  own  with  them  that  no  method  was  to 
be  neglected  which  had  in  it  the  promise  of  still  larger 
benefits  and  yet  more  enduring  results." 

The  mission  was  held  simultaneously  in  twenty-one 
parishes.  On  Friday,  November  23,  the  Bishop  met  the 
clergy  of  the  city  at  the  Church  of  the  Heavenly  Rest  for 
a  service  introductory  to  the  mission;  on  Friday,  Decem- 


188  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

her  18th,  at  Trinity  Church,  he  presided  and  spoke  at  the 
last  of  the  mission  services  for  men.  The  Rev.  W.  Hay 
M.  H.  Aitken,  superintendent  of  the  Church  of  England 
Parochial  Mission  Society,  came  over  from  England.  He 
had  had  experience  in  the  Twelve  Days  London  Mission 
in  1869,  and  in  innumerable  lesser  missions  since.  The 
Rev.  Dr.  Francis  Pigou  came  down  from  Canada,  where 
he  was  vicar  of  Halifax.  Another  English  missioner  was 
the  Rev.  E.  Walpole  Warren,  vicar  of  Holy  Trinity,  Lam- 
beth. Father  Betts  of  St.  Louis,  and  Father  Larrabee  of 
Chicago  conducted  the  services  at  St.  Mary  the  Virgin's. 
At  the  Church  of  the  Redeemer,  Father  Grafton  from  the 
diocese  of  Massachusetts  and  Father  Prescott  from  the 
diocese  of  Wisconsin  conducted  what  the  Churchman  called 
"an  exacting  and  comprehensive  line  of  ministrations." 
"Here,"  said  the  reporter,  "early  English  preaching  goes 
with  early  English  liturgy."  Dr.  Courtney  of  Boston,  Dr. 
Campbell  Fair  of  Baltimore  and  Mr.  Crapsey  of  Rochester 
were  among  the  preachers.  Dr.  Richard  Newton,  nearly 
ninety  years  of  age,  and  looking  like  the  blessed  patriarchs 
of  whom  his  son  Heber  spoke  so  lightly,  preached  at  St. 
Mark's  Chapel,  every  night  for  a  week,  to  nearly  fourteen 
hundred  children  at  a  time.  "To  think,"  exclaimed  Dr. 
Newton,  coming  into  his  son's  study  with  both  hands  up- 
raised, "to  think  that  we  live  to  see  a  revival  in  Trinity 
Church,  closing  with  extempore  prayer!"  Mr.  Aitken 
crowded  Trinity  Church  with  men  who  came  to  hear  him 
answer  the  question  "Is  Life  Worth  Living?"  Bishop 
Tuttle  and  Bishop  Elliott  were  the  missioners  at  Calvary 
Church. 

In  the  Churchman  for  December  26th,  1885,  Bishop  Potter 
reviewed  the  mission.  He  met,  in  the  first  place,  the  criti- 
cism that  "its  distinctive  features  arc  only  those  weapons  of 
other  Christian  bodies  which,  having  long  disdained  or 
denounced  them,  we  are  now  compelled  to  borrow."  He 
indicated  these  differences:  (/)  "The  Mission,"  he  said, 
"is  simply  an  enlargement  or  expansion  of  ideas  that  are 


THE  ADVENT  MISSION  189 

inherent  in  the  Christian  year."  "All  that  is  included  in 
a  Mission  —  preaching,  personal  urgency,  confession  of 
sins,  communion  with  God  in  the  blessed  sacrament  of 
His  Son  —  all  these  are  included  in  the  idea  of  an  Advent 
season."  (//)  "Again,  it  is  characteristic  of  a  mission  that 
it  knows  nothing  of  a  divorce  of  the  Word  and  Sacraments." 
It  brings  those  whose  hearts  are  touched  to  baptism,  to 
confirmation,  to  the  Holy  Communion.  "I  am  not  now 
undertaking  to  say  whether  this  way  is  better  than  any 
other  way :  I  am  simply  stating  that  it  is  distinctive  of 
our  way.  Nobody  will  pretend  that  it  is  the  way  of  those 
Christians  who  bear  other  names  (and  for  whom  I  need 
not  say  I  have  the  heartiest  respect)  who  conduct  what 
are  called  Revivals."  (///)  "Yet  again,  —  and  here  I 
am  constrained  to  speak  plainly  —  there  has  been  in  our 
Mission  no  faintest  approach  to  the  grave  error  which  has 
stained  the  whole  so-called  revival  system  through  and 
through,  that  when  a  man  has  experienced  a  spasm  of  feel- 
ing he  has  'got  religion/  God  forbid  that  I  should  seem 
to  disparage  deep  feeling,  or  deny  its  place  in  the  tremendous 
struggle  through  which,  sometimes,  one  turns  from  darkness 
to  light.  If  I  did  so,  I  should  forget  lessons  and  memories 
which  are  at  the  foundation  of  my  own  spiritual  history. 
But  it  can  never  be  forgotten  that  the  evils  of  mistaking 
quickened  emotions  for  the  deliberate  action  of  the  con- 
science and  the  will  are  to  be  seen  in  lives  that  are  like 
extinct  volcanic  craters,  all  over  the  land.  The  art  —  my 
brethren  of  other  communions  must  forgive  me  if,  in  im- 
puting it,  I  seem  to  any  one  to  say  that  which  strains  the 
law  of  charity,  but  I  know,  not  from  hearsay  but  of  personal 
knowledge,  whereof  I  affirm  —  the  art  which  in  cold  blood, 
with  simulated  fervor  and  by  carefully  concerted  means 
stirs  the  sluggish  pulses,  fills  the  air  with  the  subtle  cur- 
rent of  emotional  excitement,  and  on  the  flood-tide  of  a 
contagious  enthusiasm  sweeps  a  motley  throng  into  the 
Christian  fellowship  to  be  hailed  as  having  attained  the 
end  of  religion  in  a  '  change  of  heart '  when  they  have  scarcely 


190  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

made  a  beginning  at  the  alphabet  of  Christian  disciple- 
ship, —  of  all  this  I  am  thankful  to  say  the  Mission  has 
known  nothing." 

While  the  results  of  the  Mission  are  not  easily  ascertain- 
able,  its  leading  features,  he  said,  may  readily  be  recognized. 
(i)  "The  Mission  began  a  year  ago."  During  all  these 
months  preparation  has  been  made  by  frequent  meetings 
for  prayer,  and  by  systematic  visitation  and  invitation. 
(ii)  "A.  conspicuous  feature  of  the  Mission  has  been  its 
absence  of  excitement."  "The  facts  of  life  as  they  are,  the 
sins  of  to-day,  the  indifference  and  unbelief  of  to-day, 
these  have  been  frankly  and  unreservedly  dealt  with." 
But  "this  has  been  done  without  noise  or  clamor." 
(Hi}  "Another  feature  of  the  Mission  has  been  its  informal 
and  personal  approach  to  individuals."  (iv)  "Still  another 
feature  of  the  Mission  has  been  its  success  in  reaching  the 
'lapsed'  —  the  baptized  and  confirmed  who  had  drifted 
away  from  all  habits  of  religious  living."  (r)  "Again,  the 
Mission  has  illustrated  the  value  of  informal  methods, 
and  has  gone  far  to  win  for  them  a  recognized  place.  The 
importance  of  this  can  hardly  be  over-estimated.  Almost 
everybody  was  ready  to  admit  that  the  ordinary  Prayer 
Book  services  did  not  meet  the  need  of  exigencies  nor 
suffice  to  grapple  with  individuals  in  a  direct  and  efficient 
way.  Liturgical  services  imply  a  previous  education, 
often  wanting,  and  oftener  inadequate.  Between  the 
masses,  careless,  irreligious,  without  devout  habits  or 
churchly  training,  and  the  orderly  worship  of  the  Church 
as  set  forth  for  use  in  organized  parishes,  something  wras 
needed  to  mediate.  The  Mission  has  shown  what  that  is. 
It  has  not  disesteemed  the  various  services  of  the  Prayer 
Book  ;  it  has  at  once  supplemented  them  and  led  up  to  them. 
Greater  freedom  in  hymns,  prayers  and  other  details,  has 
brought  home  to  many  what  something  more  formal  would 
have  failed  to  impress  upon  them.  There  has  been  nothing 
to  cause  alarm,  nothing  of  the  nature  of  reckless  license; 
but  much  that  was  simple,  personal  and  direct.  And  this 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  191 

larger  liberty  has,  I  am  thankful  to  believe,  come  to  stay." 
(vi)  "Once  more,  the  Mission  has  demonstrated  two  things  : 
the  power  of  the  Church  to  reach  men,  and  the  value  of 
trained  missioners  or  preachers.  No  such  spectacle  as 
has  been  presented  in  Trinity  Church  for  the  past  three 
weeks  has  been  seen  since  the  diocese  came  into  existence. 
No  such  congregations  have  been  gathered,  whether  here 
or  elsewhere,  under  any  such  circumstances  in  all  the  past 
history  of  the  Church  in  this  land."  (vii)  "Finally,  the 
Mission  has  deepened  the  faith  of  all  who  have  had  to  do 
with  it  in  the  mission  and  power  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost. 
We  have  seen  the  tokens  of  His  presence,  and  we  have 
gained  a  new  conviction  of  the  reality  of  His  influence  and 
work." 

"The  mission  idea  and  its  practical  workings,"  he  said 
to  the  Convention  of  the  diocese  in  18,86,  "have  very  natu- 
rally and  very  properly  been  made  the  subject  of  extensive 
criticism,  and  I  hope  I  recognize  the  possible  dangers  of 
methods  which  may  perhaps,  in  some  aspects  of  them, 
seem  to  bear  too  close  a  resemblance  to  agencies  and  prac- 
tices from  which  the  church  has  thus  far  been  happily  free. 
But  I  hope  also  the  time  may  never  come  when  I  shall  be 
wanting  in  sympathy  with  an  honest  attempt  to  awaken 
the  church  to  a  more  earnest  spiritual  life,  and  to  a  more 
active  endeavor  for  the  rescue  of  those  who  are  perishing ; 
and  that  this  was  very  widely,  and  in  some  cases  very  pro- 
foundly, the  result  of  the  Mission,  I  have  no  slightest 
doubt." 

One  of  the  results  of  the  Mission  in  the  ministry  of  the 
Bishop  himself  was  the  institution  of  an  annual  retreat  for 
candidates  for  ordination.  Canon  Knox-Little,  during 
that  visit  to  this  country  in  1882  which  determined  the 
establishment  of  the  Order  of  the  Holy  Cross,  had  held 
a  retreat  for  priests  at  the  Church  of  St.  Philip-in-the- 
Highlands,  at  Garrison-on-Hudson.  When  Mr.  Aitken 
came  for  the  Advent  Mission,  the  same  place  was  chosen 
by  the  Committee  of  Arrangements  for  a  devotional  prep- 


192  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

aration  of  those  who  were  to  take  part  in  it.  The  Bishop 
was  much  impressed  by  the  beauty  and  the  convenience  of 
the  situation,  and  was  deeply  gratified  when  the  rector, 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Walter  Thompson,  asked  him  to  hold  there 
a  preordination  retreat  for  young  men  about  to  be  made 
deacons.  Such  a  retreat  was  first  held  on  Thursday, 
Friday  and  Saturday,  June  17th,  18th  and  19th,  1886; 
and  for  thirteen  years  thereafter  Bishop  Potter  never 
failed  but  once  to  conduct  these  devotions  himself.  One 
year  he  was  absent  in  Europe,  and  his  place  was  taken  by 
Bishop  Capers  of  South  Carolina. 

Bishop  Potter  described  the  arrangements  of  these  meet- 
ings in  a  letter  to  Bishop  Lawrence  (April  27th,  1898). 
"Our  plan  for  the  Ordination  Retreat  is  as  follows:  We 
assemble  on  Thursday  afternoon  before  Trinity  Sunday 
at  Garrison-on-Hudson,  and  begin  with  a  service,  in  which 
two  of  the  candidates  are  appointed  to  read  the  lessons, 
at  eight  in  the  evening,  after  which  I  make  to  the  candi- 
dates an  address  of  a  general  character.  On  Friday  morn- 
ing at  eight  there  is  a  celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion 
with  an  address.  Breakfast  is  at  8  : 45.  At  ten  A.M.  there 
is  Morning  Prayer  and  another  address.  At  twelve,  the 
Litany  and  another  address.  In  the  afternoon,  I  see  the 
candidates  individually  between  two  and  five.  On  Friday 
evening  there  is  Evensong,  as  on  Thursday  evening,  with 
another  address.  On  Saturday  morning  at  7  :  30  there  is 
a  celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion  with  a  final  address, 
and  after  breakfast,  later,  the  candidates  return  with  me  to 
New  York. 

"On  the  afternoon  of  Trinity  Sunday  —  and  I  consider 
this  very  important  —  it  is  my  usage  to  visit  Blackwell's 
Island,  where,  as  you  know,  we  touch  the  lowest  strata  of 
our  social  order.  I  require  imperatively  all  the  candi- 
dates to  accompany  me  on  this  Visitation.  It  includes 
'walking  the  hospitals'  and  prisons,  and  after  service  and 
confirmation  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Good  Shepherd  I  go  from 
institution  to  institution  to  administer  confirmation  in  the 


THE   ADVENT   MISSION  193 

wards.  The  young  men  are  not  excused  on  any  pretext 
from  this  service,  and  I  do  not  tolerate  any  engagement 
to  plead  as  an  excuse  for  not  taking  part  in  it.  In  fact, 
the  license  of  a  candidate  to  preach  is  withheld  until  after 
this  service. 

"The  addresses  are,  of  course,  on  subjects  touching  the 
ministry  in  its  various  aspects.  In  connection  with  them 
I  may  venture  to  commend  'Clerical  Life  and  Work/  by 
Canon  Liddon,  'Fishers  of  Men/  by  Archbishop  Benson, 
'The  Ministry  of  Preaching/  by  Bishop  Dupanloup, 
'Seven-Fold  Might/  the  'Joy  of  the  Ministry/  by  F.  R. 
Wynne,  'The  Office  and  Work  of  the  Priest/  by  C.  J. 
Littleton,  and  'Speculum  Sacerdotum/  by  Canon  New- 
bolt  —  a  very  uncommon  book." 

In  a  postscript  he  added,  "We  go  to  Garrison,  (a)  be- 
cause it  is  pure  country,  —  no  town  or  village  ;  (6)  because 
it  has  a  small  summer  hotel,  then  unoccupied  by  summer 
tenants.  The  students  are  all  quartered  there.  We  ob- 
serve the  rule  of  silence  at  table,  and  have  a  reader  who 
reads  from  a  biography,  usually  that  of  a  missionary  — 
Breck,  Patterson,  Aves,  or  some  other.  In  the  opening 
address,  I  discourage  all  visiting  of  the  men  to  each  other's 
rooms  and  all  secular  talking ;  and  advise  much  country 
walking  at  leisure  times,  two  and  two." 

"The  Bishop  would  arrive/'  says  Dr.  Thompson,  "usually 
accompanied  by  Archdeacon  Tiffany.  The  Bishop  and  the 
Archdeacon  were  always  guests  of  the  rector  at  North 
Redoubt,  and  the  students,  varying  from  year  to  year 
from  twelve  to  thirty,  would  find  accommodation  at  the 
Highland  House.  On  Friday  the  afternoon  was  occupied 
in  part  with  canonical  examinations  and  in  part  with  private 
interviews.  The  examinations  were  always  most  thorough 
and  searching,  and  the  Bishop  was  a  kindly  but  exacting 
examiner." 

Dr.  Thompson  remembers  how  simple  and  sympathetic, 
how  direct  and  intimate,  were  the  Bishop's  addresses. 
Bishop  Wilberforce  of  Oxford,  in  his  conferences  with 


194  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

ordinands  at  Cuddesdon,  had  set  an  example  in  this  matter 
which  Bishop  Potter  was  glad  to  follow.  He  took  the  vows 
of  ordination,  one  by  one,  and  expounded  them  out  of  his 
own  experience.  He  warned  the  young  men  of  the  temp- 
tations which  would  beset  them,  and  gave  them  his  fatherly 
and  affectionate  advice.  He  walked  with  them  through 
the  country  lanes,  climbed  the  near  hills,  and  called  their 
attention  to  the  beauties  of  the  scenery,  and  to  the  historic 
and  literary  associations  of  the  neighborhood.  West  Point, 
across  the  river,  suggested  the  discipline  needed  not  only 
for  the  soldier  but  for  every  man  who  will  fight  success- 
fully in  the  equally  difficult  battles  of  peace. 

Late  on  Friday  night,  the  Bishop  would  sit  on  the  terrace 
with  his  chaplains,  speaking  with  a  rare  disclosure  of  his 
mind  and  heart  concerning  the  deep  things  of  religion.  His 
natural  reticence  was  broken  for  the  moment  by  the  ex- 
perience of  the  day,  and  by  the  congenial  company  of  his 
friends.  On  Saturday  morning  there  was  again  a  celebra- 
tion of  the  Holy  Communion,  and  a  final  meditation. 

He  said  once  that  these  meetings  were  among  the  chief 
joys  of  his  episcopate.  "The  religious  and  spiritual  side 
of  his  nature  came  out  on  these  occasions,"  says  Dr.  Thomp- 
son, "as  upon  no  others.  He  seemed  deeply  to  realize  his 
responsibility  for  the  spiritual  well-being  of  those  to  be 
committed  to  his  oversight,  and  every  tone  of  his  voice 
was  an  indication  of  the  fact  that  not  in  any  formal  sense 
but  in  very  truth,  he  was  speaking  to  his  young  disciples 
in  the  faith  of  a  veritable  Father  in  God." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   CATHEDRAL  IDEA 

1887 

"I  AM  thankful  to  be  able  to  add,"  said  the  Bishop, 
concluding  his  Annual  Address  of  September,  1886,  "that 
in  this  period  of  three  years  neither  accident,  indisposition 
nor  any  other  cause  has  prevented  the  fulfilment  of  a  single 
appointment  for  Episcopal  Visitation,  though  of  these 
there  have  been  nearly  one  thousand  altogether." 

The  General  Convention  met  in  October  in  Chicago,  and 
when  its  sessions  were  concluded  Bishop  Potter  made  a 
journey  to  Europe.  On  Thanksgiving  Day  he  preached 
the  sermon  at  the  consecration  of  Holy  Trinity  Church  in 
Paris.  He  spent  Christmas  in  Algiers.  On  Feb.  4th,  1887, 
being  the  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Consecra- 
tion of  the  First  Bishop  of  New  York,  he  joined  with  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  other  English  bishops  in 
a  service  in  Lambeth  Chapel,  and  delivered  an  address. 
He  was  accompanied  on  that  occasion  by  Bishop  Lyman 
of  North  Carolina,  and  the  appearance  of  the  two  walking 
side  by  side  in  the  procession,  and  representing  the  North 
and  the  South  of  their  country  so  recently  divided  by  civil 
war,  added  a  significant  note  to  the  event. 

Bishop  Potter  reviewed  the  repeated  endeavors  of  the 
colonial  church  to  obtain  the  episcopate  from  England. 
Even  when  the  War  of  Independence  was  over,  "the  pro- 
posal to  introduce  bishops  into  America  was  confused  with 
a  design  to  erect  among  an  independent  people  a  foreign 
hierarchy.  •  The  same  spirit  which,  in  the  breasts  of  Eng- 
lishmen long  before  and  on  English  soil,  resented  an  alien 

195 


196  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

ecclesiastical  domination,  found  a  new  if  mistaken  expres- 
sion among  their  children,  and  the  Puritan  dread  of  polit- 
ical invasion  took  on  forms  of  protest  as  violent  some- 
times as  they  were  grotesque."  These  hostile  conditions 
were  overcome.  In  1784  the  "ardent"  Seabury  was  con- 
secrated in  Scotland ;  in  1787,  in  this  chapel,  Bishop  White 
was  consecrated  for  Pennsylvania  and  Bishop  Provost  for 
New  York,  —  Bishop  White,  he  might  have  said,  by  whom 
the  preacher's  own  father  was  confirmed,  and  Bishop 
Provost  to  whom  he  himself  was  a  successor,  seventh  in 
the  line. 

He  quoted  from  Wordsworth's  "  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets." 

"To  thee,  0  saintly  White, 
Patriarch  of  a  wide-spreading  family, 
Remotest  lands  and  unborn  times  shall  turn, 
Whether  they  would  restore  or  build  to  thee, 
As  one  who  rightly  taught  how  zeal  should  burn, 
As  one  who  drew  from  out  faith's  holiest  urn 
The  purest  stream  of  sacred  energy." 

In  the  last  sentences  of  the  sermon  he  apostrophized  the 
Church  of  England:  "Honored  Mother,  hitherto  you  have 
been  preeminent  in  Christendom  for  a  scriptural  faith, 
for  sound  learning  and  for  pure  manners.  Already  you 
have  borne  witness  in  many  lands  to  the  Catholic  doctrine 
in  all  its  primitive  simplicity  and  power,  by  lives  of  un- 
selfish and  heroic  devotion.  May  it  be  so  more  and  more 
in  all  the  centuries  to  come.  And  when  another  hundred 
years  are  gone  and  children's  children  gather  here,  may 
you  still  be  found  in  all  the  plentitude  of  yet-advancing 
triumphs,  rich  in  the  gifts  and  treasures  of  your  heavenly 
Lord  and  Head,  with  no  stinted  hand  dispensing  them,  in 
ever- widening  circles  of  beneficence  to  all  mankind." 

During  this  period  of  absence  from  his  diocese,  the  Bishop 
"officiated  by  reading  prayers,  preaching  and  celebrating 
the  Holy  Communion  in  chapels  and  churches  of  the  Church 
of  England,  in  France,  Spain,  Italy,  North  Africa,  and  Eng- 
land, whenever  opportunity  offered." 


THE    CATHEDRAL   IDEA  197 

On  January  2d,  1887,  Bishop  Horatio  Potter  died,  and 
Henry  Potter,  without  further  ceremony,  became  in  name, 
as  he  had  been  in  fact,  the  sole  bishop  of  New  York. 

Bishop  Horatio  Potter  was  in  the  eighty-fifth  year  of 
his  age,  and  in  the  thirty-third  of  his  episcopate.  He  had 
come  to  his  office  at  a  troubled  time,  when  his  predecessor, 
Bishop  Onderdonk,  was  still  living,  but  under  canonical 
suspension.  His  title,  while  that  condition  continued, 
was  that  of  "provisional"  bishop.  He  had  kept  the  peace 
in  the  midst  of  the  strife  of  parties.  After  the  Civil  War,  it 
was  under  his  friendly  and  pacific  influence  that  the  southern 
bishops  returned  to  their  places  in  the  General  Convention. 
In  the  city  of  New  York,  he  was  an  eminent  person,  gracious 
and  dignified,  intent  on  what  he  called  in  a  notable  sermon 
the  "Stability  of  the  Church,"  and  adhering,  it  was  said, 
"to  the  strictest  maxims  of  the  Anglican  pulpit  which  were 
admired  in  the  Tillotsons  and  Seekers  of  former  days." 

Henry  Potter,  speaking  of  him,  remarked  upon  the  "wis- 
dom and  meekness  of  an  episcopate,  whose  habitual  reserve 
was  one  of  its  largest  elements  of  strength,  and  whose  often- 
misjudged  patience  and  forbearance  were  based,  I  believe, 
upon  a  sounder  conception  of  the  Church  as  a  Church  and 
not  a  sect,  than  many  of  its  critics  could  either  intelli- 
gently understand,  or  adequately  appreciate.  That  finest 
quality  in  character,  the  triumph  of  principle  over  tempera- 
ment, this,  it  seems  to  me,  was  the  crowning  grace  of  the 
late  Bishop  of  this  diocese.  His  tastes  and  sympathies 
were  neither  very  effusive  nor  very  comprehensive.  He 
had  likes  and  dislikes,  and  he  was  not  always  able  to  con- 
ceal them  ;  but  he  was  indulgent  when  he  could  not  admire, 
and  forbearing  where  he  strongly  disapproved ;  and  when 
we  come  to  rear  his  monument  in  our  Metropolitan  Cathe- 
dral, I  think  it  may  rightly  bear  that  inscription  which  a 
bishop  might  well  desire  above  almost  any  other  to  have 
graven  above  his  resting  place,  'He  was  a  just  man.'  May 
God  give  to  those  who  come  after  him  grace  to  cherish 
his  memory  and  imitate  his  virtues." 


198  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

The  reference  to  the  cathedral  touched  a  matter  very 
close  to  Henry  Potter's  heart.  By  nature  and  disposition 
an  administrative  person,  giving  his  mind  and  energy  to 
the  devising  and  improving  of  effective  methods  of  religious 
work,  the  erection  of  a  cathedral  had  come  to  seem  to  him 
not  only  important  but  necessary.  It  was  not  that  he 
missed,  as  many  bishops  do,  the  privilege  and  satisfaction 
of  a  church  of  his  own.  Still  less  were  there  present  in 
his  mind  the  architectural  ambitions,  the  joys  of  building, 
which  moved  some  of  the  princely  bishops  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  He  desired  a  working  centre  for  the  life  and  wor- 
ship of  the  Church. 

Already,  preaching  at  the  consecration  of  the  Cathedral 
of  the  Incarnation,  at  Garden  City,  he  had  expressed  his 
idea  of  the  uses  of  such  sanctuaries.  "We  are  told,"  he 
said,  "that  new  problems  confront  us  in  America  at  this 
hour,  and  the  building  of  cathedrals  will  not  help  them. 
'This  is  a  practical  age,  and  its  evils  await  a  direct  and 
practical  solution.  We  want  the  college ;  we  want  the 
hospital ;  we  want  the  reformatory,  we  want  the  creche 
and  the  orphanage,  the  trades-school  and  the  trained 
nurse,  the  hygienic  lectures  and  the  free  library,  the  school 
of  arts  and  the  refuge  for  the  aged,  but  we  do  not  want 
the  Cathedral.'  I  venture  to  submit  that  we  want,  a  great 
deal  more  than  we  want  any  or  all  of  them,  the  spirit  that 
inspires  and  originates  them."  "This  spirit,"  he  declared, 
is  not  the  "  enthusiasm  of  humanity,"  but  by  all  the  witnesses 
of  experience,  the  enthusiasm  of  religion.  And  this  is  kindled 
in  the  honor  of  God.  "I  maintain  that  that  structure  which 
stands  for  influences  so  potent  and  so  extreme  cannot  be 
too  stately,  too  spacious  or  imperial,  and  most  surely  can- 
not be  an  anachronism  in  any  age  or  in  any  land." 

He  dealt  with  the  objection  that  a  cathedral  is  the  bishop's 
church,  and  may  lend  itself  to  a  dangerous  centralization 
of  episcopal  authority.  "One  finds  it  hard  to  refrain  from 
a  smile  when  he  hears  the  Cathedral  and  the  Cathedral 
system  spoken  of  as  preparing  the  way  for  the  undue  ag- 


THE   CATHEDRAL   IDEA  199 

grandizement  of  the  Episcopate.  Do  those  who  utter 
such  a  warning  know  how  much,  or  rather  how  little,  power 
an  English  bishop  has  ordinarily  within  the  precincts  of  an 
English  Cathedral?"  And  if  it  is  urged  that  we  may  order 
things  otherwise  in  this  country,  "is  a  cathedral  founda- 
tion anything  else  than  the  creation  of  a  Diocesan  Con- 
vention, with  its  clerical  and  lay  representation,  its  trained 
priests  and  doctors  and  lawyers,  its  clear-headed  men  of 
business,  no  one  of  them  too  eager  to  vote  power  even  into 
the  most  tried  and  troubled  Episcopal  hands?" 

As  for  the  objection  that  the  Cathedral  is  "essentially 
alien  to  our  national  ideas  and  our  democratic  principles," 
the  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  cathedrals  of  England. 
"I  would  not  belittle  one  of  the  manifold  agencies  and 
influences  [which  have  awakened  the  English  Church], 
but  I  declare  here  my  profound  conviction  that  no  one 
thing  in  this  generation  has  done  more  to  rehabilitate 
the  Church  of  England  in  the  affections  of  the  people  of 
England  than  the  free  services  of  her  great  cathedrals,  and 
chief  among  them  the  services  in  her  metropolitan  cathe- 
dral, which,  welcoming  every  comer  absolutely  without 
distinction,  and  giving  to  him  constantly  and  freely  her 
very  best,  made  men  feel  and  own  that  she  is  indeed,  as 
she  claims  to  be,  the  Church  of  the  people.  Depend  upon 
it,  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore  the  significance  of  her  ex- 
ample. When  once  we  have  lifted  our  fairest  and  costliest 
to  the  skies,  and  then  have  flung  its  doors  wide  open  to 
the  wrorld,  the  world  will  understand  that  what  we  say  of 
brotherhood  in  Christ  we  mean." 

Accordingly,  in  May,  1887,  the  Bishop  made  a  public 
appeal  to  the  citizens  of  New  York. 

"Men  and  brethren,  —  It  was  the  just  pride  of  a  great 
Hebrew  scholar,  apostle,  and  missionary  that  he  was  'a 
citizen  of  no  mean  city/  and  it  may  justly  be  the  pride 
of  those  whose  lot  is  cast  in  the  Metropolitan  city  of  America 
that  their  home  has  a  history  and  a  promise  not  unworthy 
of  their  affectionate  interest  and  devotion.  A  commercial 


200  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

city  in  its  origin  and  conspicuous  characteristics,  it  has  yet 
come  to  be  a  centre  of  letters,  of  science  and  of  art.  Adorned 
by  the  palaces  of  trade,  it  is  not  without  ornament  as  the 
home  of  a  large-hearted  and  open-handed  philanthropy, 
and  as  the  guardian  of  noble  libraries  and  rare  treasures  of 
painting  and  sculpture.  More  and  more  are  the  faces  of 
men  and  women,  all  over  this  and  other  lands,  turned  to 
it  as  a  city  of  preeminent  interest  and  influence,  the  dwell- 
ing-place of  culture,  wealth,  and  of  a  nation's  best  thought. 
Never  before  in  its  history  was  there  so  cordial  an  interest 
in  its  prosperity  and  greatness ;  and  recent  benefactions  to 
literature  and  art  have  shown,  what  earlier  and  scarcely 
less  princely  benefactions  to  science  and  humanity  have 
proclaimed,  that  its  citizens  are  determined  to  make  it 
more  and  more  worthy  of  that  foremost  place  and  that 
large  influence  which  it  is  destined  to  hold  and  exert. 

"It  is  in  view  of  these  facts  that  its  influence  not  only 
in  the  direction  of  culture  and  art  but  on  the  side  of  great 
moral  ideas  becomes  of  preeminent  consequence.  It  is 
faith  in  them,  rather  than  wealth  or  culture,  which  has 
made  nations  permanently  great ;  and  it  is  where  all  secular 
ambitions  have  been  dominated  by  great  spiritual  ideas, 
inculcating  devotion  to  duty  and  reverence  for  eternal 
righteousness,  that  civilization  has  achieved  its  worthiest 
victories,  and  that  great  cities  have  best  taught  and  en- 
nobled humanity. 

"But  great  moral  and  spiritual  ideas  need  to  find  ex- 
pression and  embodiment  in  visible  institutions  and  struc- 
tures, and  it  is  these  which  have  been  in  all  ages  and  lands 
nurseries  of  faith  and  of  reverence  for  the  unseen.  Amid 
things  transient,  these  have  taught  men  to  live  for  things 
that  are  permanent ;  and  triumphing  over  decay  them- 
selves, they  have  kindled  in  the  hearts  of  humanity  a  serene 
patience  under  adversity,  and  an  immortal  hope  in  the  final 
triumph  of  God  and  good. 

"Said  a  teacher  of  rare  insight  in  another  hemisphere, 
not  long  ago,  'What  are  the  remains  which  you  can  study 


.-  H 


o    a 


ft 

*     ^\ 
85     S  * 


THE    CATHEDRAL   IDEA  201 

in  the  land  of  the  Caesars  and  the  Ptolemies?  The  build- 
ings devoted  to  the  convenience  of  the  body  are  for  the 
most  part  gone,  while  those  that  represent  the  ideas  of  the 
mind  are  standing  yet.  The  provisions  for  shelter,  the 
places  of  traffic,  the  treasuries  of  wealth,  have  crumbled 
into  dust  with  the  generations  that  built  and  filled  them. 
But  the  temple,  answering  to  the  sense  of  the  Infinite  and 
Holy,  the  rock-hewn  sepulchre  where  love  and  mystery 
blended  into  a  twilight  of  sunrise  —  these  survive  the 
shock  of  centuries,  and  testify  that  religion  and  love  and 
honor  for  the  good  are  inextinguishable.' 

"For  the  erection  of  such  a  building,  worthy  of  a  great 
city,  of  its  accumulated  wealth,  and  of  its  large  responsi- 
bilities, the  time  would  seem  to  have  arrived.  No  American 
citizen  who  has  seen  in  London  the  throngs  composed  of 
every  class,  and  representing  every  interest  that  gather 
in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  and  Westminster  Abbey,  all  alike 
equally  welcome  to  services  whose  majestic  dignity  and 
simplicity  inspires  the  coldest  spectator,  can  doubt  the 
influence  for  good  of  these  grand  and  stately  fabrics.  Of- 
fering to  all  men,  of  whatever  condition  or  fellowship,  the 
ministrations  of  religion  in  a  language  understood  by  the 
common  people,  bidding  to  their  pulpits  the  ablest  and  most 
honored  teachers,  free  for  meditation,  devotion,  or  rest  at 
all  hours,  without  fee  or  restriction,  they  have  been  a  wit- 
ness to  the  brotherhood  of  humanity  in  the  bond  of  the 
divine  Nazarene,  and  of  the  need  of  the  human  heart  for 
some  worthy  place  and  voice  for  the  expression  of  its  deep- 
est wants. 

"Such  a  need  waits  a  more  adequate  means  of  expression 
among  ourselves. 

"We  want  —  there  are  many  who  are  strongly  persuaded 
-  in  this  great  and  busy  centre  of  a  nation's  life,  a  sanctuary 
worthy  of  a  great  people's  deepest  faith.  That  trust  in 
God  which  kept  alive  our  fathers'  courage,  heroism  and 
rectitude,  needs  to-day  some  nobler  visible  expression  — 
an  expression  commensurate,  in  one  word,  with  that  material 


202  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

prosperity  which  we  have  reached  as  a  people  owning  its 
dependence  upon  God  and  upon  His  blessing  on  our  under- 
taking. 

"Such  a  building  would  meet,  moreover,  practical  and 
urgent  demands. 

"  (a)  It  would  be  the  people's  church,  in  which  no  reserved 
rights  could  be  bought,  hired  or  held  on  any  pretext  whatever. 

"  (6)  It  would  be  the  rightful  centre  of  practical  philan- 
thropies, having  foundations  and  endowments  for  the 
mission  work  of  a  great  city,  and  especially  for  the  educa- 
tion of  skilled  teachers  and  workers,  with  intelligent  as  well 
as  emotional  sympathy  with  our  grave  social  problems. 

"  (c)  It  would  have  a  pulpit  in  which  the  best  preachers 
within  its  command,  from  all  parts  of  the  land,  and  of 
various  schools  of  thought,  would  have  a  place  and  op- 
portunity, thus  bringing  the  people  of  a  great  metropolis 
into  touch  with  the  strongest  and  most  helpful  minds  of 
the  age,  and  affording  presentations  of  truth  wider,  deeper 
and  larger  than  those  of  any  individual  teacher. 

"  (d)  It  would  be  the  fitting  shrine  of  memorials  of  our 
honored  dead,  the  heroes,  leaders  and  helpers  whose  names 
have  adorned  the  annals  of  our  country,  and  whose  monu- 
ments would  vividly  recall  their  virtues  and  services. 

"  (e)  And  finally,  it  would  tell  to  all  men  everywhere  that 
'the  life  is  more  than  meat  and  the  body  than  raiment'; 
that  man  is,  after  all,  a  child  needing  guidance,  comfort 
and  pardon ;  and  that  he  best  lives  here  who  lives  in  the 
inspiration  of  an  unseen  Leader  and  an  immortal  Hope. 

"In  commending  this  undertaking  to  my  fellow-citizens, 
I  need  only  add  that  it  has  originated  in  no  personal  wish 
or  desire  of  my  own,  and  that  it  has  enlisted  the  sympathies 
of  many  not  of  the  communion  of  which  I  am  a  minister. 
These  with  others  have  long  believed,  and  stand  ready,  some 
of  them  to  show  their  faith  by  their  works,  that  in  a  material 
age  there  is  a  special  need  in  this  great  city  of  some  com- 
manding witness  to  faith  in  the  unseen,  and  to  the  great 
fundamental  truths  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  Such 


THE   CATHEDRAL   IDEA  203 

a  building  would  of  necessity,  under  our  present  conditions, 
require  to  be  administered  by  the  Church  under  whose 
control  it  would  be  reared,  but  its  welcome  would  be  for 
all  men  of  whatsoever  friendship,  and  its  influence  would 
be  felt  in  the  interests  of  our  common  Christianity  through- 
out the  whole  land.  It  would  be  the  symbol  of  no  foreign 
sovereignty,  whether  in  the  domain  of  faith  or  morals, 
but  the  exponent  of  those  great  religious  ideas  in  which 
the  foundations  of  the  republic  were  laid,  and  of  which 
our  open  Bible,  our  family  life,  our  language  and  our  best 
literature,  are  the  expression. 

"As  such,  I  venture  to  ask  for  the  enterprise  the  co- 
operation of  those  to  whom  these  words  are  addressed. 
A  native  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and  for  nearly  twenty 
years  a  citizen  of  its  chief  city,  I  own  to  an  affection  for  it 
at  once  deep  and  ardent.  An  ecclesiastic  by  profession, 
I  have  nevertheless,  I  hope,  shown  myself  not  indifferent 
to  interests  other  than  those  which  are  merely  ecclesiastical 
in  their  character  and  aims ;  and  it  is  certainly  not  the 
mere  aggrandizement  of  the  church  whose  servant  I  am  for 
which  I  am  here  solicitous.  There  is  a  larger  fellowship 
than  any  that  is  only  ecclesiastical,  and  one  which,  I  be- 
lieve, such  an  undertaking  as  I  have  here  sketched  would 
preeminently  serve. 

"As  such,  I  earnestly  commend  it  to  all  those  to  whom 
these  words  may  come." 

In  a  Pastoral  Letter,  written  to  be  read  in  the  churches 
of  the  diocese  on  Sunday,  June  12th,  he  commended  the 
matter  to  the  attention  of  his  own  clergy  and  people.  He 
reminded  them  that  the  project  had  been  especially  dear 
to  his  predecessor,  who  had  dwelt  upon  it  in  his  convention 
address  in  1872,  and  again  in  1873. 

The  response  to  this  appeal  was  gratifying  and  generous. 
Immediately,  Mr.  D.  Willis  James,  a  Presbyterian,  made 
a  contribution  of  a  hundred  thousand  dollars.  Other  gifts 
brought  up  the  amount  to  half  a  million  dollars.  It  was 
calculated  that  ten  times  that  sum  would  be  needed  to 


204  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

purchase  the  site  and  erect  the  building.  The  bishop 
thought  the  undertaking  might  be  fairly  completed  in 
twenty  years.  He  hoped  that  he  might  live  to  see  the 
chancel  and  the  transepts. 

There  was  some  little  misunderstanding  of  the  terms  of 
the  appeal  as  they  expressed  the  relation  of  the  cathedral  to 
the  common  Christianity  of  the  city.  Some  thought  that 
ministers  of  all  denominations  were  to  preach  in  the  cathe- 
dral pulpit.  "The  best  preachers  within  its  command/' 
had  been  the  bishop's  phrase,  "the  strongest  and  most 
helpful  minds  of  the  age."  These  large  words  seemed  to 
some  grotesque,  if  the  selection  was  to  be  confined  to  the 
ministry  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  To  the  Christian  Ad- 
vocate, the  appeal  to  other  Protestants  to  assist  in  the  work 
of  construction  appeared  "a  decidedly  cool  proceeding." 
The  Episcopal  Church,  it  said,  is  recognized  as  "only  one 
of  the  many  divisions  of  Christendom,  and  one  of  the 
smallest  in  number,  and  in  the  eyes  of  other  Protestants 
it  is  simply  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Denomination.  And 
this  sect  asks  the  members  of  other  sects,  burdened  with 
their  own  responsibilities,  to  assist  in  building  a  cathedral !" 
"Suppose,"  said  the  editor,  "the  cathedral  is  completed, 
and  the  Rev.  John  Hall  enters.  Will  he  be  recognized 
as  a  minister?  Would  he  be  allowed  to  perform  any  other 
function  than  that  of  a  layman?  If  Dr.  William  M.  Taylor 
were  to  attend,  would  he  receive  the  consideration  accorded 
to  ministers  of  other  communions  by  Presbyterians  and 
Congregationalists?  Would  Dr.  William  Ormiston  or  Dr. 
Thomas  Armitagc  be  asked  to  read  the  form  of  absolution? 
Could  Bishop  William  L.  Harris  be  permitted  to  perform 
any  service  which  a  layman  cannot?  With  such  claims 
as  these,  is  not  the  appeal  itself  monumental?" 

A  New  York  correspondent  of  the  Philadelphia  Ledger 
and  Transcript  reported  a  conversation  with  "an  influential 
and  scholarly  rector  of  an  up-town  parish,"  who  said, 
"There  is  no  room  for  what  is  called  the  cathedral  system 
in  this  country.  Not  only  our  church  polity  but  the  whole 


THE    CATHEDRAL   IDEA  205 

genius  of  our  republican  institutions  is  against  it.  A  great 
cathedral  in  the  wealthy  city  of  New  York  would  be  the 
first  step  towards  a  Protestant  Episcopal  Popedom.  Let 
the  money  be  appropriated  to  the  building  of  free  churches 
and  chapels  in  destitute  portions  of  the  city,  not  to  a  showy 
cathedral  on  Murray  Hill." 

For  the  most  part,  however,  the  sentiments  which  made 
themselves  audible  or  legible  were  in  favor  of  the  plan. 
The  venerable  Dr.  Thomas  Vermilyea,  head  of  the  Col- 
legiate Reformed  Church  in  New  York,  welcomed  the  plan. 
"I  presume,"  he  said,  "that  the  cathedral  would  be  fully 
endowed  so  that  frequent  services  may  be  held,  and  es- 
pecially that  full  and  free  accommodations  will  be  pro- 
vided for  the  poor.  All  our  churches  cannot  be  constantly 
opened  for  devout,  sorrowful,  seeking  souls.  The  cathedral 
could,  and  I  suppose,  would."  "God  prosper  the  attempt, 
and  make  the  cathedral  an  agency  of  Christian  light  and 
love,  widely  extensive  and  lasting  through  the  ages." 

"It  is  my  desire,"  said  Dr.  Dix  at  Trinity,  "that  from 
this  parish  church,  mother  of  all  the  churches  in  the  city, 
and  from  this  pulpit,  there  should  go  forth  an  expression, 
as  clear  as  possible,  of  cordial  and  entire  sympathy  with 
the  bishop  in  the  views  he  has  presented  and  the  wishes 
he  has  expressed."  "In  God's  name,"  said  Dr.  Rainsford 
at  St.  George's,  "let  us  throw  open  to  all  a  beautiful  House, 
where  all  things  lovely  and  sweet  are  combined  in  an  effort 
worthily  to  worship  Him  from  whom  every  good  and  per- 
fect gift  doth  come." 

Dr.  Huntington  at  Grace  Church  spoke  of  a  "natural 
fitness  in  having  the  religious  architecture  of  a  city  kept 
always  at  least  a  little  in  advance  of  its  municipal  and 
domestic  architecture."  "I  can  imagine  no  more  glorious 
destiny  for  the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine  than  that 
when  finished  it  should  become  the  home  of  a  great  re- 
united family  of  God,  its  open  doors  eloquent  of  welcome 
to  all  who  seek  approach,  its  nave  a  nation's  thoroughfare, 
its  side  chapels  set  severally  apart  for  the  various  kindreds 


206  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

and  tongues  that  mingle  in  this  many-voiced  civilization 
which  makes  our  city  different  from  any  other  city  of  the 
world ;  its  choir  vocal  with  its  psalms  and  hymns  and 
spiritual  songs  that  all  men  love,  and  its  altar  rail  the  meet- 
ing-place for  all  penitent  and  believing  souls  who  in  sin- 
cerity and  truth  are  seeking  Him  whose  house  it  is." 

The  newspapers  of  the  city  applauded  the  cathedral 
idea,  and  some  of  them  undertook  to  find  a  site.  The 
Mail  and  Express,  of  June  25th,  1887,  suggested  an  ele- 
vated place  which  very  few  New  Yorkers,  it  said,  had 
ever  visited.  It  was  a  ridge  of  ground  between  Ninth 
and  Tenth  Avenues  and  110th  and  120th  Streets.  "From 
110th  to  112th  Street  stretch  the  beautiful  grounds  of  the 
Leake  and  Watts  Orphan  Asylum.  Above  that,  for  several 
blocks,  there  are  only  a  few  scattered  houses,  and  then 
comes  Bloomingdale.  This  ridge  fulfils  every  require- 
ment. It  has  plenty  of  room  on  it ;  it  is  high  ;  it  is  central 
enough,  and  it  is  easy  of  access.  There  is  scarcely  another 
point  on  Manhattan  Island  from  which  such  an  outlook  - 
so  extensive  and  varied  and  looking  in  so  many  different 
directions  —  can  be  had.  If  a  cathedral  were  placed  there, 
it  would  be  at  least  250  or  300  feet  high,  and  its  lofty  spires 
and  towers  would  be  visible  over  a  far  wider  extent  of  terri- 
tory than  is  now  commanded  by  an  observer  from  the  spot. 
It  would  be  in  constant  view,  within  this  century,  of  the 
homes  of  more  than  a  million  people.  Where  else  in  the 
world  can  you  find  such  a  site ;  and  who  can  tell  what 
inspiration  its  mere  presence  would  afford  to  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  within  whose  constant  view  it  would  stand?" 

A  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  cathedral  had  been  in  exist- 
ence since  Bishop  Horatio  Potter's  appeal  in  1873.  They 
secured  this  site,  "upon  110th  street,  between  Ninth  and 
Tenth  Avenues,  and  extending  from  110th  to  113th  Street." 
"Its  commanding  character  and  its  exceptional  advantages 
in  elevation  and  neighborhood,"  said  the  Bishop,  "have 
won  from  the  outset  universal  recognition.  No  cathedral 
in  any  great  city  in  the  world  has  to-day  a  site  which,  for 


THE   CATHEDRAL   IDEA  207 

commanding  dignity,  will  approach  that  which  we  have 
secured  —  the  manifold  advantages  of  which  are  becoming 
daily  more  apparent.  Among  them  is  the  opportunity 
afforded  for  grouping  about  the  Cathedral  other  church 
institutions,  educational  and  charitable,  thus  making  the 
whole  a  comprehensive  and  complete  expression  of  the 
spirit  of  our  holy  religion." 

Already  there  had  dawned  upon  his  mind  a  vision  which 
he  ever  after  strove  to  realize,  though  he  succeeded  only 
in  part.  He  saw  on  the  Cathedral  Heights,  around  the 
central  sanctuary,  not  only  St.  Luke's  Hospital,  but  Trinity 
School,  and  St.  Stephen's  College,  and  the  General  Theo- 
logical Seminary. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   BUSINESS   OF  A   BISHOP 

1888 

('!T  is  proper  that  I  should  say  a  word/'  wrote  the  Bishop 
at  the  end  of  the  detailed  account  of  his  visitations  and 
acts^for  1888,  uin  regard  to  a  kindly  and  earnest  caution 
which  has,  of  late,  been  frequently  addressed  to  me.  It 
is  in  substance  that  I  have  been  wont  to  err  in  attempting 
too  much,  and  that  I  might  wisely  save  my  strength,  and 
more  effectually  serve  the  diocese,  if  I  confined  myself  to 
tasks  which  the  diocese  itself,  and  the  strictly  construed 
obligations  of  my  office,  impose  upon  me. 

"I  trust  there  is  no  one  who  supposes  that  I  would  be 
guilty  of  the  impertinence  of  obtruding  this  matter  upon 
the  notice  of  the  Convention,  if  it  concerned  only  myself 
or  my  own  health  or  continued  power  of  work.  Nobody 
can  possibly  consider  these  of  less  consequence  to  the  wel- 
fare of  the  diocese  than  I  do.  But  there  is  just  this  sting 
in  such  friendly,  and,  I  am  sure,  well-meant  admonitions, 
that  they  imply  that  I  have  been  wont  to  give  to  others 
what,  in  a  very  real  and  sacred  sense,  was  not  my  own  to 
give,  and  what  belonged  primarily  and  preeminently  to 
my  own  cure  and  charge ;  and  further,  that  because  of 
such  spendthrift  service  where  it  was  not  owed,  I  have  had 
so  much  less  time  and  strength  for  labor  where  it  was. 

"This  aspect  of  the  matter  has  led  me  to  review  the 
work  of  the  past  year,  in  order  to  ascertain  in  this  light 
precisely  its  character  and  relations,  and  the  result  of  that 
review  is  as  follows  : 

208 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  A   BISHOP  209 

"During  the  past  year  I  have  filled  some  five  hundred 
appointments  of  one  kind  and  another,  of  which  precisely 
four  have  been  extra-diocesan,  and  four  more  of  a  nature 
not  directly  related  to  the  life  and  work  of  the  church, 
parochial  or  institutional,  in  this  diocese.  In  these  figures, 
I  do  not,  of  course,  include  the  half-dozen  engagements, 
more  or  less,  fulfilled  during  the  wholly  exceptional  cir- 
cumstances of  the  late  Lambeth  Conference,  nor  some 
few  others,  rendered  upon  chance  occasions,  when  absent 
from  the  diocese  for  rest. 

"A  man  who  out  of  a  day  of  twenty-four  hours  should 
give  less  than  thirty  minutes  of  it  to  the  service  of  his 
fellow-men  other  than  his  own  household,  would  hardly 
be  regarded  as  inspired  by  a  very  prodigal  and  dissipated 
beneficence ;  and  as  that  is  a  somewhat  larger  proportion 
of  time  than  I  have  given  to  public  interests  other  than 
those  of  the  diocese  of  New  York,  I  presume  I  may  ven- 
ture to  hope  that  a  very  general  misapprehension  will,  by 
these  words,  be  effectually  dissipated. 

"In  fact  the  labors  of  the  episcopate  in  the  diocese  of 
New  York  are  large  and  incessant  because  the  diocese  is 
larger  and,  thank  God,  daily  growing  more  and  more  exact- 
ing. I  can  honestly  say  that  these  exactions  have  been 
to  me  thus  far  only  a  cause  of  grateful  rejoicing,  and  I 
have  no  smallest  doubt  that  when  they  become  too  great 
to  be  properly  met,  some  wise  provision  for  the  emergency 
will  be  made." 

A  distinguished  presbyter,  the  rector  of  a  great  parish, 
having  remarked  that  he  could  not  see,  for  the  life  of  him, 
what  a  bishop  did  with  his  time,  it  may  be  well  to  consider 
at  this  point  some  of  the  manifold  interests  which  engaged 
the  attention  of  the  Bishop  of  New  York. 

From  this  time  on,  the  cathedral  was  constantly  in  his 
thoughts.  The  Rev.  Robert  J.  Nevin,  of  St.  Paul's  Church, 
Rome,  came  to  his  assistance,  and  for  a  while  gave  himself 
entirely  to  the  work  of  getting  the  vast  project  fairly  started, 
but  the  Bishop  took  a  large  share  of  the  burden  on  his  own 


210  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

shoulders.  It  involved  many  letters  and  many  interviews. 
It  demanded  important  decisions  whose  determination  af- 
fected the  whole  future.  It  was  the  kind  of  thing  from 
which  there  is  no  escape.  It  was  a  vital  part  of  the  Bishop's 
life. 

Meanwhile,  progress  was  being  made  in  the  better  or- 
ganization of  the  diocese.  Five  archdeaconries  had  been 
"canonically  constituted  and  set  in  operation."  This  was 
done  at  a  time  when  the  title  of  archdeacon  was  so  unusual 
in  this  country  as  to  bring  a  chill  of  alarm  to  timid  and 
conservative  souls.  In  his  Convention  Address  for  1888, 
Bishop  Potter  found  it  necessary  to  explain  that  it  did 
not  imply  any  prelatical  innovations. 

"An  archdeaconry/'  he  said;  "is  no  more  foreign  than 
a  Convocation,  a  Conference,  or  a  Diocese.  Indeed,  all 
these  are  foreign,  if  you  choose,  as  are  all  our  titles,  —  of 
bishops,  priests,  deacons,  officers  of  colleges,  parish  vestries, 
or  any  other.  There  is  a  vast  amount  of  very  silly  and 
irrelevant  talk  on  this  subject  which,  whether  in  the  in- 
terests of  truth  or  charity,  is  very  poor  and  very  pointless. 
I  suppose  that  we  in  America  did  not  invent  our  Church, 
and  at  best  are  simply  attempting  to  adapt  it  to  new  issues 
and  emergencies.  The  Reformation  dismissed  too  much, 
and  the  exodus  to  America  was  attended  by  still  further 
denudation,  which  the  emergency  may  have  excused  but 
which  our  emergency  most  certainly  does  not  demand. 
'We  want/  say  some,  'no  archaisms,  no  unrealities,  —  no 
merely  prelatical  imitations.'  No,  most  surely,  but  we 
want  all  that  is  best  in  new  and  old,  if  it  can  be  made  plain 
that  it  will  effectually  serve  our  purpose  and  our  people." 

"The  difference,"  he  explained,  "between  an  Archdeacon 
and  a  Dean  of  Convocation  is  this  very  real  difference,  that 
the  one  had  no  definite  responsibility,  had  no  canonical 
recognition,  and  had  no  properly  denned  function,  and 
that  the  other  has  all  these ;  while,  in  practice,  in  the 
mission  work  of  the  Diocese,  in  the  administration  of  dis- 
cipline, in  the  oversight  of  deacons,  in  the  due  distribution 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  A  BISHOP  211 

of  corporate  responsibility,  the  Diocese  has  now  a  set  of 
officers,  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  body  of  clergy  and  laity 
on  the  other,  which  have,  each  one,  a  definite  area  to  care 
for,  and  precise  and  clearly  defined  duties  to  discharge." 

Already  the  increased  efficiency  of  this  method  was 
manifest.  "Never  before  in  the  history  of  the  Diocese 
were  so  many  deacons  at  work  as  to-day,  under  proper, 
frequent  and  stimulating  oversight.  Never  before  were 
parishes  so  closely  in  touch  with  mission  work  outside  their 
own  boundaries,  and  so  intelligently  informed  in  regard  to 
it.  Never  before  were  the  contributions  for  mission  work 
in  this  city  and  elsewhere  in  the  diocese  in  such  worthy 
proportion  to  our  ability  to  make  them." 

The  Bishop  was  desirous  to  enlist  in  this  work  of  church 
extension  the  organized  energy  of  the  laymen  of  the  Diocese. 
He  was  much  gratified  at  the  organization  of  the  Church 
Club,  which  was  "already  beginning  to  count  its  member- 
ship by  hundreds."  He  hoped  to  have  every  parish  repre- 
sented in  it.  He  valued  the  "larger  fellowship"  which  it 
involved,  the  breaking  down  of  parochial  boundaries,  the 
opportunities  for  discussion  of  great  subjects.  He  came 
back,  filled  with  enthusiasm,  from  a  service  in  Durham 
Cathedral  where,  at  the  time  of  the  Lambeth  Conference, 
sixty  bishops  had  participated  in  the  setting  apart  of  men 
to  do  lay  work,  as  readers,  evangelists  and  preachers.  He 
wished  for  such  an  organization  of  Lay  Helpers  in  the 
Church  in  America. 

"Our  system  of  parochial  organization,"  he  said,  "and 
our  almost  universally  prevalent  traditions,  have  con- 
spired to  educate  us  in  the  belief  that  the  functions  of  the 
laity  in  the  life  and  work  of  the  Church  are  almost  if  not 
altogether  passive  or  secular.  They  are  to  enjoy  its  ser- 
vice, and  to  guard  its  pecuniary  trusts,  and  then  to  leave 
its  ministrations  of  whatever  sort  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
the  clergy.  Meantime,  neither  one  nor  the  other  of  the 
great  extremes  of  Christendom,  nor  the  vast  majority  of 
those  whose  place  is  between  them,  makes  any  such  blunder 


212  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

as  this.  Rome  has  her  orders  of  Lay-Brothers,  and  Method- 
ism, though  under  slightly  different  nomenclature,  has 
hers.  .  .  .  This  Diocese  should  have  an  organized  body 
of  Diocesan  Lay  Helpers,  directly  related  to  the  ordinary, 
duly  set  apart  for  their  work,  and  clothed  with  such  powers 
as  will  enable  them  to  supplement  and  enlarge  the  influence 
and  work  of  the  clergy  in  the  many  ways  in  which  they 
are  abundantly  able  to  do  so." 

In  his  interest  in  the  improvement  of  methods  he  did 
not  forget  the  unfailing  need  of  enriching  and  deepening 
the  life  of  the  spirit.  "It  is  impossible  that  any  one  should 
be  occupied  in  striving  to  make  Christ  and  His  work  for 
the  souls  of  men  known  to  others  without  having  brought 
home  to  him  the  need  of  his  own  more  intimate  and  con- 
stant contact  with  the  sources  of  all  spiritual  life  and  power. 
Prayer,  the  Holy  Scriptures,  the  Blessed  Sacraments,  be- 
come new  and  more  precious  realities  when  one  turns  to 
them  for  strength  and  guidance  in  the  work  of  a  ministry 
which  is  committed  to  each  and  every  one  of  us  as  we  have 
'received  the  gift." 

In  a  growing  and  changing  city,  like  New  York,  the  Bishop 
was  frequently  confronted  with  the  problem  of  the  con- 
solidation or  multiplication  of  parishes.  The  decision  in 
these  matters  was  placed  by  canon  in  the  hands  of  the 
Bishop  and  the  Standing  Committee.  The  Bishop  assured 
the  Convention  of  his  purpose  to  meet  such  questions 
with  sole  regard  to  the  general  good.  "The  Bishop  cer- 
tainly has  as  sincere  and  earnest  a  desire  for  the  growth  of 
the  Diocese  as  anybody,  and  if,  in  any  particular  instance, 
interest,  prejudice  or  personal  feeling  should  unconsciously 
influence  him  to  be  obstructive,  his  Standing  Committee, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  would  have  the  courage  and  candor  to 
express  its  dissent  in  unmistakable,  and  doubtless,  ulti- 
mately persuasive  tones."  "I  beg  any  one  to  whom  I 
speak  to  believe  that  in  such  decisions  as  for  my  own  part 
I  shall  be  constrained  to  reach,  I  am  compelled  by  con- 
siderations of  such  far-reaching  importance  as  I  have  here 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  A   BISHOP  213 

endeavored  to  set  before  you.  Such  considerations,  I  sub- 
mit, ought  to  lift  any  and  every  individual  case  quite  out 
of  the  realm  of  mere  personalities." 

Beginning  with  1867,  a  Federate  Council  of  the  Dioceses 
of  New  York  had  been  first  proposed,  then  discussed,  then 
tentatively  convened.  It  was  regarded  by  some,  however, 
with  grave  suspicion.  It  was  a  part  of  a  general  move- 
ment which  has  since  resulted  in  a  Provincial  System. 
Bishop  Whittingham  of  Maryland,  in  1871,  had  brought 
before  the  General  Convention  a  plan  "for  creating  by 
constitutional  enactment,  eight  Provincial  Synods,  cover- 
ing the  whole  territory  of  the  United  States."  In  1877, 
the  General  Convention,  while  declining  such  imperative 
procedure  as  was  thus  proposed,  found  nothing  in  the 
law  of  the  Church  to  forbid  the  voluntary  association  of 
neighboring  dioceses  in  Federate  Councils.  In  the  South, 
and  in  the  Northwest,  dioceses  had  already  combined  to 
maintain  certain  educational  institutions.  In  the  northern 
part  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  a  conference  of  bishops, 
clergy  and  laity  had  been  called  to  consider  local  problems. 
"For  myself,"  said  Bishop  Potter,  addressing  the  Diocesan 
Convention  of  1889,  "I  believe  profoundly  that  questions 
of  discipline,  questions  of  race,  local  questions  of  missionary 
policy  and  progress,  far  more  than  merely  local  questions 
of  civil  or  material  interest,  will  compel  us  before  long  to 
turn  from  such  a  body  as  the  General  Convention,  already 
grown  too  unwieldy  for  purposes  of  efficient  legislation, 
and  clothed  with  no  power  for  administering  the  laws 
which  it  makes,  to  that  venerable  and  well-tried  agency 
known  as  the  Provincial  Synod ;  and,  until  we  can  get  to 
that,  to  such  qualified  and  restricted  form  of  the  same  thing 
as  is  to  be  had  in  a  Federate  Council." 

Such  a  situation,  presenting  on  the  one  side  a  plain  need 
and  on  the  other  side  a  vague  prejudice,  will  be  met  in  one 
way  by  an  ecclesiastical  politician  and  in  another  way  by 
an  ecclesiastical  statesman.  The  politician,  seeing  the  need, 
and  impatient  of  what  seems  to  him  an  unreasonable  prej- 


214  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

udice,  will  carry  the  plan  through  in  the  face  of  opposition. 
But  the  statesman  will  wait.  He  knows,  indeed,  that  "the 
dark  shadow  of  metropolitan  aggrandizement,"  -in  which 
conservative  distrust  sees  the  stealthy  approach  of  a  dim 
procession  headed  by  a  Presiding  Bishop  of  the  Federate 
Council  of  New  York,  succeeded  by  an  archbishop,  followed 
very  likely  by  cardinals,  and  completed  by  the  Pope  him- 
self, —  has  no  substance  whatsoever;  but  he  perceives  that 
the  essential  evil  in  these  dreaded  ills  lies  in  the  coercion  of 
the  conscience,  and  he  declines  to  have  any  part  in  it. 
He  will  wait,  in  spite  of  his  own  clear  conviction,  until 
his  neighbor  is  as  clear  about  it  as  he  is.  He  will  postpone 
decision,  that  the  discussion  may  go  on.  He  accepts  the 
wise  maxim  that  "an  ounce  of  consultation  is  worth  a  ton 
of  explanation."  It  is  this  acceptance  which  makes  him  a 
statesman. 

Accordingly,  Bishop  Potter  advised  the  Diocese  of  New 
York  to  maintain  a  passive  attitude.  "I  am  willing,"  he 
said,  "to  strain  the  requirements  of  courtesy  as  far  as  any- 
body, but  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  that  we  should  need- 
lessly invite  dishonoring  imputations  in  order  to  further 
the  wishes  of  those  from  among  whom  they  come.  For 
myself,  I  think  it  right  to  say  that  the  Federate  Council 
having  adjourned  to  meet  in  accordance  with  the  designa- 
tion of  time  and  place  by  the  Bishop  of  this  Diocese,  I 
shall,  as  at  present  advised,  either  decline  to  make  such 
designation  until  requested  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  the 
other  Bishops  and  Deputies,  or  else  move  the  adjournment 
of  the  body,  from  time  to  time,  until  the  air  is  cleared  of 
suspicions  equally  unworthy  and  unintelligent.  There  are 
grave  defects  in  remedying  which  such  a  body  can  largely  aid. 
But  they  may  better  wait  correction  until  we  can  secure  sub- 
stantial unanimity  and  loyal  and  cordial  cooperation  in 
dealing  with  them.  The  principle  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
Diocesan  Episcopate,  like  that  of  State's  Rights,  may  die 
hard,  but  the  Kingdom  of  Clod  is  larger  than  any  Diocese, 
and  ecclesiastical  legislation  will  one  day  come  to  its  own." 


THE   BUSINESS   OF   A   BISHOP  215 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  passage  more  expressive  of 
Bishop  Potter's  wise  patience,  clear  judgment  and  far- 
sighted  statesmanship. 

These  personal  qualities,  added  to  his  official  position  as 
the  chief  minister  of  the  largest  diocese,  brought  to  Bishop 
Potter  by  every  mail  questions  to  be  answered  and  decisions 
to  be  made.  His  advice  was  asked,  his  influence  solicited. 

Thus  in  December,  1888,  it  came  to  the  knowledge  of 
churchmen  in  Massachusetts  that  "subtle  efforts"  were 
being  made  to  prevent  the  Bishops  and  Standing  Com- 
mittees from  confirming  the  election  of  the  Rev.  Charles 
Chapman  Grafton  to  be  the  Bishop  of  Fond  du  Lac.  Mr. 
Grafton  was  at  that  time  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Advent 
in  Boston.  Thereupon,  the  Rev.  William  Copley  Winslow 
wTrote  to  Bishop  Potter  explaining  the  situation,  and  he 
permitted  him  to  make  such  use  of  his  reply  as  seemed 
good  under  the  circumstances.  "I  am  quite  of  your  mind," 
said  the  Bishop,  "in  regard  to  the  whole  Grafton  business. 
I  have  become  increasingly  persuaded  that  the  opposition 
to  Mr.  Grafton's  confirmation  proceeds  from  sources  whose 
interference  deserves  to  be  resented  and  resisted ;  and  if  I 
could  sec  how  properly  I  could  do  so,  I  would  gladly  do  so 
publicly  ;  for  I  think  we  are  in  a  bad  way  when  the  question 
of  filling  an  American  Episcopate  is  to  be  determined  by  a 
foreign  Order. 

"It  would  be  enough  for  me,  in  this  case,  that  the  Stand- 
ing Committee  of  his  own  diocese  have  confirmed  Mr. 
Grafton,  even  if  there  were  no  other  reasons  for  his  con- 
firmation ;  but  the  more  I  have  inquired,  the  more  I  have 
become  persuaded  that  there  is  no  warrant  for  the  objec- 
tions which  have  been  urged  against  Mr.  Grafton's  con- 
firmation. Unfortunately,  the  statements  which  just  now 
are  most  potential  in  preventing  the  confirmation  were 
made  under  circumstances  which  make  it  impossible  to 
reveal  their  source  or  occasion.  I  think,  however,  in  view 
of  all  the  facts,  that  any  one  who  has  anywhere  made  state- 
ments impugning  the  character  of  Mr.  Grafton  should  be 


216  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

compelled  to  repeat  them  openly.  It  is  impossible  to  fight 
a  foe  in  the  dark,  and  it  is  a  scandalous  condition  of  things 
when  charges  made  in  private,  and  under  circumstances 
which  make  it  impossible  to  call  their  authors  to  account, 
are  used  as  the  means  of  preventing  the  confirmation  of  a 
bishop-elect. 

"The  dioceses  are  acting  under  the  influence  of  a  pressure 
largely  brought  to  bear,  as  I  believe,  in  consequence  of  such 
statements  as  those  to  which  I  have  referred ;  but  they 
have  heard  only  one  side  of  the  case,  and  they  are  con- 
demning an  innocent  man  on  purely  fragmentary  evidence. 

"Such  action,  I  think,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  bishop  in 
the  Church  to  disown  and  disapprove,  and  as  I  am  persuaded 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  Mr.  Grafton's  separa- 
tion from  the  so-called  '  Cowley  Fathers '  which  does  not 
redound  to  his  honor  and  manhood,  I  should  be  ashamed 
of  myself  if  I  did  not  gladly  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity 
of  saying  so." 

Dr.  Winslow  sent  copies  of  this  letter  to  nearly  all  of  the 
bishops,  enclosing  also  a  statement  expressive  of  the  mind 
of  the  Boston  Clerical  Association.  These  communications, 
in  some  instances,  arrived  too  late,  but  they  served  to 
determine  the  affirmative  votes  of  a  sufficient  majority. 
Mr.  Grafton  was  duly  confirmed  by  the  Bishops  and  Stand- 
ing Committees,  and  was  consecrated  April  25th,  1889. 

The  following  letter  came  to  Bishop  Potter  from  Arden, 
N.  Y.  :  "A  difference  of  opinion  exists  here  at  Arden  as 
to  the  age  and  origin  of  the  Catholic  and  Episcopal  Churches, 
and  I  beg  your  answers  to  the  following  questions  :  (l)  Which 
is  the  older  church?  (2)  When  was  the  Episcopal  Church 
founded?  (3)  Is  the  Episcopal  Church  Protestant? 
(4)  Who  was  the  founder  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  if  any 
one  man  merits  that  honor?  (5)  If  the  Episcopal  Church 
existed  before  the  Lutheran  Reformation,  where  did  it 
exist  ?  (6)  Is  there  any  difference  between  the  Episcopal 
Church  and  the  historic  Church  of  England?" 

The    Bishop    made    a    prompt    and    appropriate    reply : 


THE   BUSINESS   OF   A   BISHOP  217 

"(l)  They  are  of  one  parentage,  Christ  and  His  apostles. 
The  Episcopal  Church  traces  its  descent  directly  to  them, 
so  that  there  can  be  no  question  of  seniority.  (2)  The 
Episcopal  Church  was  founded  by  Christ  during  His  life 
on  earth.  (3)  Yes,  Protestant  against  Roman  error,  Catholic 
for  primitive  truth.  (4)  Jesus  Christ,  'who  has  built  His 
Church  on  the  foundation  of  the  apostles  and  prophets.' 
(5)  The  Episcopal  Church  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
Lutheran  Reformation.  Catholics  in  England  purified  the 
Church,  and  disowned  the  tyranny  of  the  papacy ;  and 
then  some  of  them  came  to  this  country  and  built  up  the 
Episcopal  Church,  as  it  is  popularly  called.  If  it  is  asked, 
Where  was  the  Church  before  the  Reformation  ?  the  answer 
in  accordance  with  the  above  is,  Where  was  your  face  this 
morning  before  you  washed  it?  (6)  Yes,  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  America  is  not  a  state  church." 

Bishop  Potter  occupied  a  part  of  one  Easter  Tuesday  in 
the  composition  of  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  a  Baptist  paper, 
in  answer  to  a  rather  triumphant  question  as  to  the  meaning 
of  the  New  Testament  word  baptizo.  "More  learned  men," 
he  said,  "than  you  or  I  have  differed  in  regard  to  the  merely 
critical  and  technical  question  which  your  letter  raises  ;  and, 
though  I  do  not  believe  so  confidently  as  you  appear  to, 
that  the  weight  of  evidence  is  all  on  one  side,  I  am  quite 
free  to  say  that  the  literal  meaning  of  baptizo,  as  ordinarily 
found  in  classical  writers,  is  usually  to  plunge,  dip,  im- 
merse or  whatever  word  you  want  to  use  to  strengthen  your 
position.  The  rubric  of  the  Episcopal  Church  which  directs 
the  mode  of  baptism  recognizes  this  in  the  use  of  the  words, 
'  Then  shall  the  minister  dip  him  in  the  water  or  pour  water 
on  his  head/ 

"If  this  admission  makes  you  any  happier,  I  am  glad  of 
it.  That  in  any  large  sense  it  is  of  the  smallest  significance, 
I  am  utterly  unable  to  see.  Your  conception  of  baptism 
as  demanding  invariably  just  so  much  water,  applied  in 
just  such  a  way,  belongs  to  the  domain  of  literalism,  formal- 
ism, ceremonialism  pure  and  simple,  by  which  the  Church 


218  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

has  been  darkened  and  hindered  in  all  ages.  To  be  sure, 
you  grossly  and  habitually  violate  it  whenever  you  baptize 
elsewhere  than  in  running  streams,  and  with  artificially 
heated  water,  in  artificially  heated  rooms.  But  if  you  did 
not,  the  vice  of  your  position  would  be  the  same.  It  is 
simply  sticking  fast  to  the  letter ;  and  out  of  it  has  come 
the  '  dip-and-done-with-it '  conception  of  religion  which  has 
blighted  whole  sections  and  misled  countless  souls. 

"The  essence  of  the  sacrament  of  baptism  is  water,  ap- 
plied (whether  by  the  handful  or  by  the  hogsheadful  is,  in 
my  judgment,  of  no  smallest  consequence)  to  the  person 
baptized  in  the  name  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  The  effects  of  it  are  not  wrought  by 
water  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  To  be  concerned  about 
these  seems  to  me  the  matter  of  real  consequence,  and  to 
linger  in  disputations  about  words  is  but  another  form  of 
wrangling  about  those  ' beggarly  elements'  on  which,  not 
alone  the  Church  in  Galatia  but  Christendom  in  all  ages, 
has  been  sadly  prone  to  waste  both  time  and  energy. 

"Of  course,  I  have  very  scant  expectation  that  you  will 
publish  this  letter.  It  is  not  what  you  want,  and  it  wrill 
not  serve  your  denominational  end.  But  is  it  not  worth 
while,  my  dear  brother,  to  try  and  get  a  little  above  the 
sawdust  of  the  ecclesiastical  boxing-ring?  Believe  me,  your 
readers,  far  more  generally  than  you  dream  of,  are  sick  of 
the  strident  scream  of  controversy  about  words  and  cere- 
monies. It  has  not  helped  one  of  them  to  be  a  better  man 
or  woman.  It  has  too  often  diverted  them  from  the  one 
truth  that  you  and  I  and  all  men  preeminently  need  to 
learn;  and  that  truth  is  this  :  that  'the  Kingdom  of  God  is 
not  meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  in 
the  Holy  Ghost.  For  he  that  in  these  tilings  serveth  Christ 
is  acceptable  to  God  and  approved  of  men."1 

Archdeacon  Xolson,  through  whose  hands  as  the  Bishop's 
secretary  the  daily  letters  passed,  has  described  (Churchman, 
October  24th,  1908)  some  of  the  curiosities  of  his  corre- 
spondence. "One  interesting  specimen  came  from  a  woman 


THE    BUSINESS   OP   A   BISHOP  219 

of  a  far  away  rural  district  who  modestly  requested  the 
Bishop  to  help  her  to  find  purchasers  to  relieve  her  of  a 
valuable  quilt.  Another  fair  unknown  aimed  higher,  and 
asked  for  a  big  loan  to  buy  a  chicken  farm.  I  well  remember 
a  curious  letter  which  the  Bishop  received  some  years  ago 
from  another  stranger.  This  stranger  said  that  he  and  his 
wife  had  arrived  from  the  west  for  a  brief  sojourn  in  Brook- 
lyn, and  having  heard  of  the  kindness  and  social  prominence 
of  the  Bishop,  it  occurred  to  them  that  he  might  be  willing 
to  ask  some  friend  of  his  on  Fifth  Avenue  to  invite  them  to 
dinner,  in  order  that  they  might  be  able  to  verify  the  re- 
ports which  they  had  heard  of  the  splendors  of  palatial  life 
in  the  metropolis." 

Along  with  the  daily  demands  of  this  diversified  corre- 
spondence, and  the  continual  problems  of  administration, 
went  what  St.  Paul  called  "the  care  of  all  the  churches." 
The  clergy  on  one  side  and  the  parishes  on  the  other  brought 
him  their  plans,  their  difficulties,  their  discouragements, 
and  their  complaints.  Parochial  boundaries  must  be  ad- 
justed, unpaid  salaries  must  be  collected,  the  extensive 
business  of  an  ecclesiastical  "intelligence  office"  must  be 
transacted,  ritual  differences  must  be  reconciled.  It  was 
the  business  of  the  Bishop  to  maintain  what  he  liked  to 
call  "a  right  perspective,"  to  get  lesser  matters  into  places 
of  subordinate  importance,  and  greater  matters  into  the 
foreground  of  interest,  especially  to  guard  the  life  of  the 
spirit,  in  himself  and  in  his  people,  against  the  invasion  of 
formalism,  of  organization  and  regulation,  and  of  secularity. 
"A  candle  more  or  less,"  he  said,  "is  of  infinitely  insignificant 
consequence  compared  with  those  tremendous  problems  of 
our  modern  social  life  that  threaten  the  foundations  of  the 
family,  the  institution  of  marriage,  the  very  existence  of 
society.  The  question  of  more  or  less  ritual,  of  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  Church's  doctrinal  standards,  and  the 
like,  are  of  very  secondary  consequence  save  as  they  are, 
first  of  all,  moral  questions,  relating  to  the  obligations  of  our 
ordination  vows,  and  loyalty  to  our  plighted  faith.  Goer- 


220  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

cion,  for  which  many  are  crying  aloud,  mutual  denunciation, 
which  are  the  stock  in  trade  of  a  great  deal  of  religious 
controversy,  further  definitions,  unless  they  be  the  defini- 
tions of  a  just  liberty  —  these  will  do  as  little  for  the  Church 
as  they  have  done  in  the  past ;  but  the  revival  of  the  sense 
of  the  sanctity  of  a  promise  —  the  rebuilding  of  men's 
homes  upon  the  eternal  sanctity  of  duty,  and  the  blossom- 
ing out  of  men's  homes  of  a  habit  of  truth-dealing  and 
truth-telling,  of  purity  and  self-restraint,  —  in  one  word, 
the  reawakening  of  that  old  spirit  of  Godward  responsi- 
bility which,  as  it  stands  over  against  the  Sanhedrin  of 
custom,  the  Sanhedrin  of  wealth,  the  Sanhedrin  of  expediency 
and  lawless  self-will,  has  but  one  thing  to  say,  '  whether  it 
be  right  to  hearken  unto  men  more  than  unto  God,  judge 
ye'  -  -  this  I  take  it,  is  that  which  the  Church  most  wants, 
and  for  which  the  world  most  waits." 

The  ofHcial  reports  of  episcopal  acts  printed  year  by  year 
in  the  Convention  Journal  show  an  incessant  occupation 
which  seems  enough  of  itself  to  fill  the  whole  of  a  man's 
time.  In  the  morning  he  consecrates  a  church,  in  the 
afternoon  attends  a  meeting  of  trustees,  in  the  evening 
confirms  a  class  and  addresses  them,  and  at  ten  o'clock 
speaks  at  a  public  meeting.  "  10  A.M.  at  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Faith,  confirmed  17  and  addressed  them.  11 
A.M.  at  St.  Luke's  Church,  preached,  confirmed  29,  and 
addressed  them.  P.M.  at  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation 
preached,  confirmed  25,  and  addressed  them.  Evening  at 
the  Church  of  the  Ascension,  Mt.  Vernon,  confirmed  21, 
and  addressed  them.  9  :  30,  evening,  at  Carnegie  Hall,  at 
meeting  in  behalf  of  sufferers  by  Indian  famine,  delivered 
an  address."  He  crowded  the  days  full,  giving  himself 
without  reservation.  In  the  summer,  year  after  year,  he 
went  abroad,  and  laid  in  a  new  store  of  strength ;  but  even 
then  he  was  not  idle,  speaking  and  preaching  frequently. 

"He  had  a  habit  of  rising  early,"  says  Archdeacon  Nelson, 
"but  he  was  willing  to  let  the  sun  get  up  first.  His  ex- 
traordinary capacity  for  work  was  well  known.  The 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  A  BISHOP  221 

spirit  of  energy  was  a  militant  force  in  his  life  current. 
However  big  and  thronging  his  tasks,  he  met  them  with  the 
confidence  of  an  athlete  confronting  the  light  routine  of  a 
practice  hour.  He  sometimes  crowded  into  a  single  day 
work  enough  to  satisfy  a  less  strenuous  man  for  a  whole 
week.  Only  once  in  twenty-nine  years  have  I  heard  him 
say  that  he  was  tired,  and  that  was  at  the  beginning  of  an 
illness  which  prostrated  him  for  some  days."  This  ability 
to  work  without  weariness  Dr.  Nelson  ascribed  to  the 
Bishop's  regular  and  punctual  manner  of  life.  Every  task 
had  its  appointed  time,  and  was  performed,  down  to  the 
answering  of  the  letters  of  his  obscurest  correspondents, 
with  the  constant  diligence  of  a  man  of  business.  "Fortu- 
nately for  him,  he  was  such  a  good  sleeper  that  he  could 
read  or  work  until  a  late  hour  of  the  night,  and  then  go  to 
sleep  as  soon  as  his  eyes  closed  on  his  pillow." 

In  1888,  he  attended  the  sessions  of  the  Lambeth  Confer- 
ence. It  was  a  delight  to  him,  as  he  said,  "to  listen  to 
Harold  Browne  and  Lightfoot,  to  Stubbs  now  of  Oxford, 
and  King ;  to  renew  in  daily  contact  with  the  younger 
Wordsworth  inspiring  memories  imperishably  associated 
with  the  elder;  to  recognize  in  Thompson  of  York  and  in 
Temple  of  London  rarer  and  nobler  qualities  than,  perhaps, 
they  had  been  wont  to  associate  with  them,  and  to  be 
thankful  that  in  Harvey  Goodwin,  in  Moorehouse,  in 
Maclagan,  in  Bickersteth  of  Japan,  in  Webb  of  Grahams- 
town,  in  Kennion  of  Adelaide,  in  Webber  of  Brisbane,  in 
Copleston  of  Colombo,  in  Nuttall  of  Jamaica,  in  Churton 
of  Nassau,  and  many  another,  the  Church  still  had  among 
her  leaders  saintly  and  soldierly  men  who  had  more  than 
one  of  them,  on  many  a  difficult  field,  abundantly  vindicated 
that  title  which,  in  his  memorable  address  at  Durham,  our 
own  Bishop  (Coxe)  of  Western  New  York  conferred  upon 
them,  of  being  'men  who  had  an  understanding  of  the 
times.'" 

It  was  the  privilege  of  Bishop  Potter,  on  behalf  of  his 
brethren  of  the  American  Episcopate,  and  at  their  request, 


222  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

to  address  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  a  letter  ex- 
pressing their  "grateful  sense  of  his  manifold  courtesies, 
and  of  the  rare  benignity,  impartiality  and  patience"  with 
which  he  had  presided  over  the  deliberations. 

He  preached  at  Canterbury  Cathedral,  and  Lichfield 
Cathedral,  and  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  London,  and  con- 
firmed a  class  at  the  Chapel  Royal,  Savoy. 

The  University  of  Cambridge,  on  the  18th  of  July,  made 
him  a  Doctor  of  Laws,  and  thus  enrolled  him  among  those 
whom  they  accounted  eminent.  Writing  for  the  Churchman 
(September  15,  1888)  on  "Building  Civic  and  Ecclesias- 
tical, "  the  Bishop  asserted  again  the  importance  of  giving  to 
the  life  of  religion  an  appropriate  material  expression.  "The 
social  progress  of  a  great  people  has  written  itself  in  the 
buildings  for  domestic  shelter,  for  traffic,  for  science  and  for 
art,  which  it  has  reared,  and  is  rearing  on  every  hand.  It  is 
a  cloud  upon  the  escutcheon  of  our  American  fair  fame  that 
hardly  anywhere,  or  at  all  adequately,  have  they  as  yet 
been  matched  by  buildings  for  the  highest  uses  of  all."  It 
was  a  part  of  his  constant  endeavor  to  bring  into  the  mind 
of  the  people  his  own  vision  of  a  cathedral. 

Still  more  interesting,  however,  is  the  revelation  which 
he  made  of  his  own  mind  regarding  the  situation  in  religion. 
He  came  to  the  end  of  the  first  five  years  of  his  episcopate 
full  of  confidence  and  faith.  He  had  been  much  pleased 
with  the  emphasis  which  the  Lambeth  Conference  had  put 
upon  social  morality.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
congenial  with  his  spirit  than  the  removal  of  interest  from 
the  ritual  and  doctrinal  debates  which  had  disturbed  the 
Church,  and  the  placing  of  it  upon  matters  of  substantial 
importance.  He  saw  in  this  a  process  of  religious  recon- 
struction — •  a  larger  vision,  a  more  reverent  retrospect,  a 
more  dispassionate,  and  therefore  a  juster  judgment,  and 
therefore  again,  a  more  intelligent  and  a  more  hopeful 
missionary  activity.  "And  out  of  this,"  he  said,  "has 
come  to  pass  that  while  we  know  less  than  our  fathers 
knew  about  the  damnation  of  non-elect  infants,  we  know 


THE   BUSINESS   OF   A    BISHOP  223 

more  of  the  calling  of  the  Church  of  God  as  a  Divine  Society 
in  the  world,  sent  here  to  grapple  with  its  miseries,  to  up- 
lift its  fallen  ones,  and  to  conquer  its  sin.  This  is  the  new 
note  of  hopefulness,  which,  unless  I  mistake  its  strain, 
rings  through  all  our  Christian  life  and  work  to-day.  We 
are  not  dealing  with  worn-out  superstitions,  we  are  not 
clinging  to  exploded  fables,  we  are  feeling  anew  the  thrill 
of  that  quickening  stir  of  the  Spirit  which  as  it  comes  once, 
and  again  and  again,  in  the  history  of  the  race,  proclaims, 
'Behold,  I  make  all  things  new." 

Preaching  a  year  later  at  the  consecration  of  Dr.  Thomas 
F.  Davies  to  be  Bishop  of  Michigan,  he  said,  "The  fact  of  all 
others  most  inspiring  in  our  land  and  day  is  this,  that 
never  before  was  the  Church,  whose  children  we  are,  so 
earnestly  at  work  to  understand  the  situation  in  the  midst 
of  which  she  finds  herself,  and  so  strenuous  by  any  and 
every  lawful  means  to  adjust  herself  to  its  demands.  An 
alien,  as  men  perversely  miscalled  her,  in  the  beginning, 
from  the  spirit  of  our  republican  institutions  and  the  genius 
of  the  American  people,  she  has  not  failed  to  show  that 
she  is  loyal  to  the  one,  and  that  she  understands  the  other. 
Not  always  nor  everywhere  wise  in  the  manner  or  the 
methods  of  her  original  approach  to  those  whom  she  has 
sought  to  win,  she  has  consented  to  unlearn  not  a  little  of 
her  earlier  stiffness,  and  largely  to  disown  a  temper  of 
aristocratic  reserve  and  exclusiveness.  As  in  England,  so 
in  America,  she  is  no  longer  the  church  of  a  class  or  a  caste, 
but  preeminently,  at  any  rate  in  some  of  her  chiefest  centres, 
the  church  of  the  people." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

AT  THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL 

1889 

THE  most  outstanding  event  in  the  ministry  of  Bishop 
Potter  during  the  year  1889  was  his  address  in  St.  Paul's 
Chapel  on  the  occasion  of  the  Centennial  of  the  Inaugura- 
tion of  Washington. 

On  April  30th,  1789,  George  Washington  was  inaugurated 
President  of  the  United  States.  The  ceremony  took  place 
upon  the  balcony  of  Federal  Hall,  in  New  York,  at  the  corner 
of  Wall  and  Broad  streets.  The  great  crowd  in  the  streets, 
at  the  windows  and  upon  the  roofs  having  been  brought  to 
silence,  Otis,  the  secretary  of  the  senate,  held  an  open  Bible 
on  a  crimson  cushion,  Chancellor  Livingston  administered 
the  oath  of  office,  and  Washington,  saying,  "I  swear.  So 
help  me  God,"  kissed  the  book.  At  the  conclusion  of  the 
inaugural  address  the  assembly  of  dignitaries,  followed  by  the 
multitude,  went  on  foot  to  St.  Paul's  Chapel,  where  Bishop 
Provoost,  one  of  the  chaplains  of  Congress,  offered  prayers. 
Washington  then  returned  quietly  to  his  house. 

When  it  was  proposed  to  commemorate  in  1889,  the 
centennial  anniversary  of  this  great  event,  the  markedly 
religious  character  of  the  original  occasion  was  had  in  mind, 
and  arrangements  were  made  whereby  again  the  President 
of  the  United  States  should  take  part  in  a  religious  service 
conducted  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel  by  the  Bishop  of  New 
York. 

The  service  was  at  nine  o'clock,  on  April  30th.  The 
Chapel  was  garnished  with  flags  and  American  eagles.  The 
coat  of  arms  of  the  United  States  distinguished  the  pew 

224 


AT   THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  225 

reserved  for  the  President,  and  the  arms  of  the  State  of  New 
York  marked  the  pew  reserved  for  the  Governor.  The 
ushers  were  descendants  of  men  eminent  in  American 
history.  At  the  door  of  the  Chapel,  the  vestry  of  Trinity 
Church  met  President  Harrison  and  Vice-Prcsident  Morton. 
David  B.  Hill  was  the  Governor,  Hugh  J.  Grant  was  the 
Mayor  of  New  York.  Former  Presidents  Hayes  and  Cleve- 
land were  in  attendance,  and  with  them  an  assembly  of 
officers  of  the  Cabinet,  senators,  members  of  Congress,  and 
notable  citizens,  including  a  score  of  governors  of  states. 
The  service  began,  as  in  1789,  with  the  singing  of  the  "Old 
Hundredth.'  Dr.  Dix  said  prayers  prepared  for  the 
occasion.  Bishop  Potter  made  the  address. 

It  was  commonly  remarked,  after  the  centennial  celebra- 
tion was  over,  that  the  speeches  which  accompanied  it 
failed,  for  the  most  part,  to  rise  to  the  great  level  of  the 
anniversary.  This  was  said  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  among 
the  speakers  were  President  Eliot  and  James  Russell  Lowell. 
The  official  orator  was  Mr.  Depew.  It  was  universally 
agreed,  however,  that  to  this  criticism  there  was  one  ex- 
ception. "The  most  remarkable  address  brought  out  by 
the  centennial  celebration,"  said  the  New  York  Times, 
"  was  the  sermon  by  Bishop  Potter  at  St.  Paul's  Chapel." 

The  profound  impression  made  by  this  address  —  the 
most  famous  of  the  public  utterances  of  Bishop  Potter,  — 
warrants  its  repetition  here  in  whole. 

"One  hundred  years  ago  there  knelt  within  these  walls  a 
man  to  whom,  above  all  others  in  its  history,  this  nation  is 
indebted.  An  Englishman  by  race  and  lineage,  he  incar- 
nated in  his  own  person  and  character  every  best  trait  and 
attribute  that  have  made  the  Anglo-Saxon  name  a  glory  to 
its  children  and  a  terror  to  its  enemies  throughout  the 
world.  But  he  was  not  so  much  an  Englishman  that, 
when  the  time  came  for  him  to  be  so,  he  was  not  even  more 
an  American ;  and  in  all  that  he  was  and  did,  a  patriot  so 
exalted,  and  a  leader  so  great  and  wise,  that  what  men  called 
him  when  he  came  here  to  be  inaugurated  as  the  first  Presi- 
Q 


226  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

dent  of  the  United  States,  the  civilized  world  has  not  since 
then  ceased  to  call  him  —  the  Father  of  his  Country. 

"We  are  here  this  morning  to  thank  God  for  so  great  a 
gift  to  this  people,  to  commemorate  the  incidents  of  which 
this  day  is  the  one  hundredth  anniversary,  and  to  recognize 
the  responsibilities  which  a  century  so  eventful  has  laid 
upon  us. 

"And  we  are  here  of  all  other  places,  first  of  all,  with  pre- 
eminent appropriateness.  I  know  not  how  it  may  be  with 
those  to  whom  all  sacred  things  and  places  are  matters  of 
equal  indifference,  but  surely  to  those  of  us  with  whom  it  is 
otherwise  it  cannot  be  without  profound  and  pathetic  im- 
port that  when  the  first  President  of  the  Republic  had  taken 
upon  him,  by  virtue  of  his  solemn  oath,  pronounced  in  the 
sight  of  the  people,  the  heavy  burden  of  its  Chief 
Magistracy,  he  turned  straightway  to  these  walls,  and 
kneeling  in  yonder  pew,  asked  God  for  strength  to  keep  his 
promise  to  the  nation  and  his  oath  to  Him.  This  was  no 
unwonted  home  to  him,  nor  to  a  large  proportion  of  those 
eminent  men  who,  with  him,  were  associated  in  framing 
the  Constitution  of  these  United  States.  Children  of  the 
same  spiritual  Mother  and  nurtured  in  the  same  Scriptural 
faith  and  order,  they  were  wont  to  carry  with  them  into 
their  public  deliberation  something  of  the  same  reverent 
and  conservative  spirit  which  they  had  learned  within  these 
walls,  and  of  which  the  youthful  and  ill-regulated  fervors 
of  the  new-born  republic  often  betrayed  its  need.  And  lie, 
their  leader  and  chief,  while  singularly  without  cant,  or 
formalism,  or  pretence  in  his  religious  habits,  was  pene- 
trated, as  we  know  well,  by  a  profound  sense  of  the  depend- 
ence of  the  republic  upon  a  guidance  other  than  that  of  man, 
and  of  his  own  need  of  a  strength  and  courage  and  wisdom 
greater  than  he  had  in  himself. 

"And  so,  with  inexpressible  tenderness  and  reverence,  we 
find  ourselves  thinking  of  him  here,  kneeling  to  ask  such 
gifts,  and  then  rising  to  go  forth  to  his  great  tasks  with 
mien  so  august  and  majestic  that  Fisher  Ames,  who  sat 


AT   THE    WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  227 

beside  him  in  this  chapel,  wrote,  'I  was  present  in  the  pew 
with  the  President,  and  must  assure  you  that,  after  making 
all  deductions  for  the  delusions  of  our  fancy  in  regard  to 
characters,  I  still  think  of  him  with  more  veneration  than 
for  any  other  person.'  So  we  think  of  him,  I  say ;  and 
indeed  it  is  impossible  to  think  otherwise.  The  modern 
student  of  history  has  endeavored  to  tell  us  how  it  was  that 
the  service  in  this  chapel  which  we  are  striving  to  reproduce 
came  about.  The  record  is  not  without  obscurity,  but  of 
one  thing  we  may  be  sure  —  that  to  him  who,  of  that  goodly 
company  who  a  hundred  years  ago  gathered  within  these 
walls,  was  chief,  it  was  no  empty  form,  no  decorous  affec- 
tation. Events  had  been  too  momentous,  the  hand  of  a 
Heavenly  Providence  had  been  too  plain,  for  him,  and  the 
men  who  were  grouped  about  him  then,  to  misread  the  one 
or  mistake  the  other.  The  easy  levity  with  which  their 
children's  children  debate  the  facts  of  God,  and  Duty,  and 
Eternal  Destiny  were  as  impossible  to  them  as  faith  and 
reverence  seem  to  be,  or  to  be  in  danger  of  becoming,  to 
many  of  us.  And  so  we  may  be  very  sure  that,  when  they 
gathered  here,  the  air  was  hushed,  and  hearts  as  well  as 
heads  were  bent  in  honest  supplication. 

"For,  after  all,  their  great  experiment  was  then,  in  truth, 
but  just  beginning.  The  memorable  days  and  deeds  which 
had  preceded  it  —  the  struggle  for  independence,  the  deli- 
cate and,  in  many  respects,  more  difficult  struggle  for  union, 
the  harmonizing  of  the  various  and  often  apparently  con- 
flicting interests  of  rival  and  remote  States  and  sections,  the 
formulating  and  adopting  of  the  National  Constitution  — 
all  these  were  after  all  but  introductory  and  preparatory  to 
the  great  experiment  itself.  It  has  been  suggested  that  we 
may  wisely  see  in  the  event  which  we  celebrate  to-day  an 
illustration  of  those  great  principles  upon  which  all  govern- 
ments rest,  of  the  continuity  of  the  Chief  Magistracy,  of 
the  corporate  life  of  the  nation  as  embodied  in  its  Executive, 
of  the  transmission,  by  due  succession,  of  authority,  and 
the  like;  of  all  of  which,  doubtless,  in  the  history  of  the 


228  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

last  100  years  we  have  an  interesting  and  on  the  whole 
inspiring  example. 

"But  it  is  a  somewhat  significant  fact  that  it  is  not  along 
lines  such  as  these  that  that  enthusiasm  which  has  flamed 
out  during  these  recent  days  and  weeks,  as  this  anniversary 
has  approached,  lias  seemed  to  move.  The  one  thing  that 
has,  I  imagine,  amazed  a  good  many  cynical  and  pessimistic 
people  among  us  is  the  way  in  which  the  ardor  of  a  great 
people's  love  and  homage  and  gratitude  has  kindled,  not 
before  the  image  of  a  mechanism,  but  of  a  man.  It  has 
been  felt  with  an  unerring  intuition  which  has,  once  and 
again  and  again  in  human  history,  been  the  attribute  of 
the  people  as  distinguished  from  the  doctrinaires,  the 
theorists,  the  system-makers,  that  that  which  makes  it 
worth  while  to  commemorate  the  inauguration  of  George 
Washington  is  not  merely  that  it  is  the  consummation  of 
the  nation's  struggle  towards  organic  life,  not  merely  that 
by  the  initiation  of  its  Chief  Executive  it  set  in  operation 
that  Constitution  of  which  Air.  Gladstone  has  declared  'as  far 
as  I  can  see,  the  American  Constitution  is  the  most  wonderful 
work  ever  struck  off  at  one  time  by  the  brain  and  purpose 
of  man';  but  that  it  celebrates  the  beginning  of  an  Ad- 
ministration which,  by  its  lofty  and  stainless  integrity,  by 
its  absolute  superiority  to  selfish  or  secondary  motives,  by 
the  rectitude  of  its  daily  conduct  in  the  face  of  whatsoever 
threats,  blandishments,  or  combinations,  rather  than  by 
the  ostentatious  pharisaism  of  its  professions,  has  taught 
this  nation  and  the  world  forever  what  the  Christian  ruler 
of  a  Christian  people  ought  to  be. 

"I  yield  to  no  man  in  my  veneration  for  the  men  who 
framed  the  compact  under  which  these  States  are  bound 
together.  No  one  can  easily  exaggerate  their  services  or 
the  value  of  that  which  they  wrought  out.  But,  after  all, 
we  may  not  forget  to-day,  that  the  tiling  which  they  made 
was  a  dead  and  not  a  living  thing.  It  had  no  power  to 
interpret  itself,  to  apply  itself,  to  execute  itself.  Splendid 
as  it  was  in  its  complex  and  forecasting  mechanism,  in- 


AT   THE    WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  229 

stinct  as  it  was,  in  one  sense,  with  a  noble  wisdom,  with  a 
large-visioned  statesmanship,  with  a  matchless  adaptability 
to  untried  emergencies,  it  was,  nevertheless,  no  different  in 
another  aspect  from  one  of  those  splendid  specimens  of 
naval  architecture  which  throng  our  wharves  to-day,  and 
which,  with  every  best  contrivance  of  human  art  and  skill, 
with  capacities  of  progress  which  newly  amaze  us  every  day, 
are  but  as  impotent,  dead  matter,  save  as  the  brain  and  hand 
of  man  shall  summon  and  command  them.  'The  ship  of 
state,'  we  say.  Yes ;  but  it  is  the  cool  and  competent 
mastery  at  the  helm  of  that,  as  of  every  other  ship,  which 
shall,  under  God,  determine  the  glory  or  the  ignominy  of 
the  voyage. 

"  Never  was  there  a  truth  which  more  surely  needed  to  be 
spoken !  A  generation  which  vaunts  its  descent  from  the 
founders  of  the  Republic  seems  largely  to  be  in  danger  of 
forgetting  their  preeminent  distinction.  They  were  few  in 
numbers,  they  were  poor  in  worldly  possessions  —  the  sum 
of  the  fortune  of  the  richest  among  them  would  afford  a 
fine  theme  for  the  scorn  of  the  plutocrat  of  to-day ;  but  they 
had  an  invincible  confidence  in  the  truth  of  those  principles 
in  which  the  foundations  of  the  Republic  had  been  laid, 
and  they  had  an  unselfish  purpose  to  maintain  them.  The 
conception  of  the  National  Government  as  a  huge  machine, 
existing  mainly  for  the  purpose  of  rewarding  partisan  ser- 
vice —  this  was  a  conception  so  alien  to  the  character  and 
conduct  of  Washington  and  his  associates  that  it  seems 
grotesque  even  to  speak  of  it.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
imagine  the  first  President  of  the  United  States  confronted 
with  some  one  who  had  ventured  to  approach  him  upon  the 
basis  of  what  are  now  commonly  known  as  '  practical 
politics.'  But  the  conception  is  impossible.  The  loathing, 
the  outraged  majesty  with  which  he  would  have  bidden 
such  a  creature  to  be  gone  is  foreshadowed  by  the  gentle 
dignity  with  which,  just  before  his  inauguration,  replying  to 
one  who  had  the  strongest  claims  upon  his  friendship,  and  who 
had  applied  to  him  during  the  progress  of  the  'Presidential 


230  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Campaign,'  as  we  should  say,  for  the  promise  of  an  appoint- 
ment to  office,  he  wrote :  '  In  touching  upon  the  more  deli- 
cate part  of  your  letter,  the  communication  of  which  fills 
me  with  real  concern,  I  will  deal  with  you  with  all  that 
frankness  which  is  due  to  friendship,  and  which  I  wish 
should  be  a  characteristic  feature  of  my  conduct  through 
life.  .  .  .  Should  it  be  my  fate  to  administer  the  Govern- 
ment, I  will  go  to  the  Chair  under  no  preengagement  of 
any  kind  or  nature  whatever.  And  when  in  it,  I  will,  to 
the  best  of  my  judgment,  discharge  the  duties  of  the  office 
with  that  impartiality  and  zeal  for  the  public  good  which 
ought  never  to  suffer  connections  of  blood  or  friendship  to 
have  the  least  sway  on  decisions  of  a  public  nature.' 

"On  this  high  level  moved  the  first  President  of  the 
Republic.  To  it  must  we  who  are  the  heirs  of  her  sacred 
interests  be  not  unwilling  to  ascend,  if  we  are  to  guard  our 
glorious  heritage ! 

"And  this  all  the  more  because  the  perils  which  confront 
us  are  so  much  graver  and  more  portentous  than  those  which 
then  impended.  There  is  (if  we  are  not  afraid  of  the  whole- 
some medicine  that  there  is  in  consenting  to  see  it) 
an  element  of  infinite  sadness  in  the  effort  which  we  are 
making  to-day.  Ransacking  the  annals  of  our  fathers  as 
we  have  been  doing  for  the  last  few  months,  a  busy  and  well- 
meaning  assiduity  would  fain  reproduce  the  scene,  the 
scenery,  the  situation,  of  an  hundred  years  ago !  Vain 
and  impotent  endeavor !  It  is  as  though  out  of  the  linea- 
ments of  living  men  we  would  fain  produce  another  Washing- 
ton. We  may  disinter  the  vanished  draperies,  we  may 
revive  the  stately  minuet,  we  may  rehabilitate  the  old 
scenes,  but  the  march  of  a  century  cannot  be  halted  or 
reversed,  and  the  enormous  change  in  the  situation  can 
neither  be  disguised  nor  ignored.  Then  we  were,  though 
not  all  of  us  sprung  from  one  nationality,  practically  one 
people.  Now,  that  steadily  deteriorating  process,  against 
whose  dangers  a  great  thinker  of  our  own  generation  warned 
his  countrymen  just  fifty  years  ago,  goes  on,  on  every  hand, 


AT   THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  231 

apace.  'The  constant  importation/  wrote  the  author  of 
'  The  Weal  of  Nations ' l  l  as  now,  in  this  country,  of  the 
lowest  orders  of  people  from  abroad  to  dilute  the  quality 
of  our  natural  manhood,  is  a  sad  and  beggarly  prostitution 
of  the  noblest  gift  ever  conferred  on  a  people.  Who  shall 
respect  a  people  who  do  not  respect  their  own  blood  ?  And 
how  shall  a  national  spirit,  or  any  determinate  and  pro- 
portionate character,  arise  out  of  so  many  low-bred  asso- 
ciations and  coarse-grained  temperaments,  imported  from 
every  clime?  It  was  indeed  in  keeping  that  Pan,  who 
was  the  son  of  everybody,  was  the  ugliest  of  the  gods.' 

"And  again :  Another  enormous  difference  between  this  day 
and  that  of  which  it  is  the  anniversary,  is  seen  in  the  enor- 
mous difference  in  the  nature  and  influence  of  the  forces 
that  determine  our  national  and  political  destiny.  Then, 
ideas  ruled  the  hour.  To-day,  there  are  indeed  ideas  that 
rule  our  hour,  but  they  must  be  merchantable  ideas.  The 
growth  of  wealth,  the  prevalence  of  luxury,  the  massing  of 
large  material  forces,  which  by  their  very  existence  are  a 
standing  menace  to  the  freedom  and  integrity  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  infinite  swagger  of  our  American  speech  and  man- 
ners, mistaking  bigness  for  greatness,  and  sadly  confounding 
gain  and  godliness  —  all  this  is  a  contrast  to  the  austere 
simplicity,  the  unpurchasable  integrity  of  the  first  days 
and  first  men  of  our  republic,  which  makes  it  impossible  to 
reproduce  to-day  either  the  temper  or  the  conduct  of  our 
fathers.  As  we  turn  the  pages  backward,  and  come  upon  the 
story  of  that  30th  of  April  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1789,  there 
is  a  certain  stateliness  in  the  air,  a  certain  ceremoniousness  in 
the  manners,  which  we  have  banished  long  ago.  We  have 
exchanged  the  Washingtonian  dignity  for  the  Jeffersonian 
simplicity  which  in  due  time  came  to  be  only  another  name 
for  the  Jacksonian  vulgarity.  And  what  have  we  gotten 
in  exchange  for  it  ?  In  the  elder  States  and  dynasties  they 
had  the  trappings  of  royalty  and  the  pomp  and  splendor  of 
the  king's  person  to  fill  men's  hearts  with  loyalty.  Well, 

1  Horace  Buslinell. 


232  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

we  have  dispensed  with  the  old  titular  dignities.  Let  us 
take  care  that  we  do  not  part  with  that  tremendous  force 
for  which  they  stood  !  If  there  be  not  titular  royalty,  all 
the  more  need  is  there  for  personal  royalty.  If  there  is  to 
be  no  nobility  of  descent,  all  the  more  indispensable  is 
it  that  there  should  be  nobility  of  ascent  —  a  character  in 
them  that  bear  rule,  so  fine  and  high  and  pure,  that  as  men 
come  within  the  circle  of  its  influence,  they  involuntarily 
pay  homage  to  that  which  is  the  one  preeminent  distinction, 
the  Royalty  of  Virtue ! 

"And  that  it  was,  men  and  brethren,  which,  as  we  turn 
to-day  and  look  at  him  who,  as  on  this  morning  just  an 
hundred  years  ago,  became  the  servant  of  the  Republic  in 
becoming  the  Chief  Ruler  of  its  people,  we  must  needs  own, 
conferred  upon  him  his  divine  right  to  rule.  All  the  more, 
therefore,  because  the  circumstances  of  his  era  were  so 
little  like  our  own,  \vc  need  to  recall  his  image  and,  if  we 
may,  not  only  to  commemorate,  but  to  reproduce  his  vir- 
tues. The  traits  which  in  him  shone  preeminent  as  our 
own  Irving  has  described  them,  'Firmness,  sagacity,  an 
immovable  justice,  courage  that  never  faltered,  and  most 
of  all  truth  that  disdained  all  artifices '  -  -  these  are  char- 
acteristics in  her  leaders  of  which  the  nation  was  never  in 
more  dire  need  than  now. 

"And  so  we  come  and  kneel  at  this  ancient  and  hallowed 
shrine  where  once  he  knelt,  and  ask  that  God  would  gra- 
ciously vouchsafe  them.  Here  in  this  holy  house  we  find 
the  witness  of  that  one  invisible  force  which,  because  it 
alone  can  rule  the  conscience,  is  destined,  one  day,  to  rule 
the  world.  Out  from  airs  dense  and  foul  with  the  coarse 
passions  and  coarser  rivalries  of  self-seeking  men,  we  turn 
aside  as  from  the  crowd  and  glare  of  some  vulgar  highway, 
swarming  with  pushing  and  ill-bred  throngs,  and  tawdry 
and  clamorous  with  bedizened  booths  and  noisy  speech,  into 
some  cool  and  shaded  wood  where,  straight  to  heaven,  some 
majestic  oak  lifts  its  tall  form,  its  roots  embedded  deep 
among  the  unchanging  rocks,  its  upper  branches  sweeping 


AT   THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  233 

the  upper  airs,  and  holding  high  commune  with  the  stars ; 
and,  as  we  think  of  him  for  whom  we  here  thank  God,  we 
say,  'Such  an  one,  in  native  majesty  he  was  a  ruler,  wise 
and  strong  and  fearless,  in  the  sight  of  God  and  men,  be- 
cause by  the  ennobling  grace  of  God  he  had  learned,  first 
of  all,  to  conquer  every  mean  and  selfish  and  self-seeking 
aim,  and  so  to  rule  himself  ! '  For 

"  '  —  What  are  numbers  knit 
By  force  or  custom  ?     Man  who  man  would  be 
Must  rule  the  empire  of  himself  —  in  it 
Must  be  supreme,  establishing  his  throne 
On  vanquished  will,  quelling  the  anarchy 

Of  hopes  and  fears,  being  himself  alone.' 

"Such  was  the  hero,  leader,  ruler,  patriot,  whom  we 
gratefully  remember  on  this  day.  We  may  not  reproduce 
his  age,  his  young  environment,  nor  him.  But  none  the 
less  may  we  rejoice  that  once  he  lived  and  led  this  people, 
'led  them  and  ruled  them  prudently,'  like  him,  that  Kingly 
Ruler  and  Shepherd  of  whom  the  Psalmist  sang,  'with  all 
his  power.'  God  give  us  the  grace  to  prize  his  grand 
example,  and,  as  we  may  in  our  more  modest  measure,  to 
reproduce  his  virtues." 

"It  was  one  of  the  consequences  of  the  matter  of  the 
Bishop's  address,"  said  an  editorial  in  the  Times,  "that 
its  form  was  of  singular  elevation,  of  sober  eloquence,  and 
not  without  the  beauty  of  style  that  profound  feeling  and 
the  consciousness  of  an  extraordinary  occasion  inspire  in 
a  highly  trained  and  sympathetic  mind.  Nor  was  there 
absent  from  the  sermon  a  touch  of  the  impressiveness  that 
arose  from  the  presence  before  the  speaker  of  men  high  in 
station,  to  whom  his  words  of  lofty  warning  and  of  search- 
ing rebuke  might  justly  be  applied.  This  was  more  mani- 
fest in  the  sermon  as  uttered  than  in  the  printed  report  to 
which,  unluckily,  most  of  the  public  are  confined  for  their 
impression  of  it.  But  it  must  be  noted  in  any  estimate 
of  the  address  as  oratory.  The  Bishop's  personal  presence, 
moreover,  lent  it  charm,  —  his  self-possession  and  polish, 


234  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

approaching  coldness,  his  perfect  respect  for  and  adherence 
to  the  traditional  manner  of  his  office,  his  musical  voice,  the 
measured  and  rounded  movement  of  his  sentences,  brought 
out  with  peculiar  force  the  glow  and  fire  of  his  thought." 

There  was  some  difference  of  opinion  among  the  news- 
papers as  to  the  propriety  of  preaching  such  a  sermon  in 
the  hearing  of  those  to  whom  it  might  most  immediately 
apply ;  the  idea  being,  in  some  quarters,  that  the  tempta- 
tions of  political  life  may  be  most  profitably  discussed  in 
prayer-meetings.  The  Bishop  himself  disclaimed  the  in- 
terpretations put  upon  his  words  by  some  of  the  more  en- 
thusiastic writers  in  the  "Mugwump"  press,  and  declared 
that  he  had  no  intention  whatever  of  either  insulting  or 
even  admonishing  the  President  of  the  United  States. 
Naturally,  however,  the  frank  speech  caused  some  confu- 
sion in  the  congregation.  "When  Bishop  Potter  read  that 
part  of  his  address  relative  to  the  tactics  and  character  of 
the  modern  '  practical  politician/  and  contrasted  the  dif- 
ference in  the  treatment  of  him  by  President  Washington 
and  the  presidents  of  later  days,  there  was  a  marked  move- 
ment of  surprise,"  says  the  Times,  "among  the  gentlemen 
who  sat  directly  in  front  of  the  pulpit.  Mr.  Depcw  glanced 
cautiously  about  at  the  other  gentlemen  in  his  immediate 
vicinity,  looking,  apparently,  to  sec  how  they  regarded  the 
words  which  fell  from  the  reverend  orator's  lips.  President 
Harrison,  who  heretofore  had  permitted  his  eyes  to  wander 
about  the  church,  fixed  his  eyes  steadily  on  the  Bishop's 
face,  and  never  removed  them  till  the  address  was  ended. 
It  was  evident  that  that  part  of  the  Bishop's  short  talk  had 
created  a  sensation  of  no  mean  proportions." 

The  sermon  produced  a  remarkable  response  in  the  ap- 
preciation and  gratitude  of  many  eminent  men. 

Professor  Norton  wrote  from  Cambridge  : 

"Although  I  am  aware  that  you  must  be  overwhelmed 
with  letters  just  now,  I  nevertheless  venture  to  offer  you 
my  grateful  acknowledgments  as  an  American  citizen  for 
the  great  service  you  have  rendered  to  the  country  in  your 


AT   THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  235 

timely  and  effective  rebuke  of  the  degradation  of  the 
presidency  of  the  United  States  into  an  agency  for  the 
brokerage  of  public  office.  Such  words  as  yours  are  an 
inspiration  and  encouragement  to  every  one  who  has  at 
heart  the  true  interests  of  the  nation." 

From  Boston  came  the  approval  of  Mr.  Lowell : 

"I  did  not  see  what  you  said  at  St.  Paul's  till  this  morn- 
ing, and;  as  I  see  that  you  have  been  the  mark  of  some 
narrow-minded  criticism,  write  two  or  three  lines  to  say 
that  I  am  grateful  to  you  for  your  manliness.  You  said 
what  needed  to  be  said ;  what  it  was  the  attitude  of  a 
Christian  minister  to  say.  Are  they  not  bidden  to  be 
instructive  in  season  and  out  of  season?" 

Edward  Eggleston  had  his  good  word  : 

"It  is  an  impertinence  no  doubt  for  me  to  felicitate  you 
on  your  address  at  St.  Paul's,  seeing  that  I  can  claim  to  be 
neither  a  judge  of  orthodoxy  nor  a  connoisseur  in  matters 
of  ecclesiastical  propriety.  You  will  certainly  be  censured 
by  those  who  think  that  the  chief  function  of  a  clergyman  is 
to  lend  decency  to  a  wedding  and  solemnity  to  a  funeral. 
But  the  one  thing  that  will  be  remembered  by  students  of 
history,  like  myself,  and  therefore  by  the  people  a  hundred 
years  hence  when  this  celebration  is  recalled  —  one  thing 
that  will  stand  out  with  the  greatest  emphasis  will  be  the 
fact  that  in  1889  a  real  Bishop  filled  the  See  of  New  York 
and  like  a  true  prophet  bore  solemn  witness  against  the 
materialism  and  corruption  of  the  time." 

The  publicists  accounted  the  address  a  reenforcement  to 
the  cause  of  better  government.  Thus  Mr.  E.  L.  Godkin  : 

"I  have  treated  myself  with  a  reading  of  the  whole  sermon 
since  you  went  away,  and  I  must  before  I  go  to  bed  sit  down 
and  thank  you  for  it.  I  think  it  is  the  bravest,  timeliest 
and  most  effective  piece  of  pulpit  oratory  which  this  genera- 
tion has  heard,  and  a  noble  use  of  a  great  occasion.  If  it 
hurts  any  one  it  will  show  that  he  is  very  sick  and  finds  in 
you  his  physician.  I  have  little  doubt,  too,  it  will  loosen 
thousands  of  clerical  tongues  all  over  the  country  and  rescue 


236  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

many  a  grieving  layman  from  the  slough  of  despond.  Many 
a  great  field  has  been  saved  by  the  ring  of  one  manly  voice 
at  the  right  moment  — '  the  psychological  moment '  — 
when  even  brave  men  begin  to  think  of  giving  up  the  fight." 

And  Mr.  Herbert  Welsh  : 

"I  have  just  read  your  address  delivered  yesterday  upon 
the  occasion  of  the  celebration  of  the  Centennial  of  the 
Inauguration  of  Washington.  I  feel  that  I  cannot  allow  a 
moment  to  pass  before  writing  to  thank  you  for  speaking 
such  words  at  such  a  time.  To  one  who  has  had  the  best 
opportunity  for  seeing  the  wickedness  and  folly  of  the  spoils 
system,  and  who  knows,  as  I  do,  how  thoroughly  it  is  in- 
trenched in  the  Federal  Government,  your  words  came  as 
the  sound  of  a  trumpet.  Much  as  I  admire  their  eloquence 
and  power  I  admire  their  courage  still  more.  For  they  were 
spoken  to  some  ears  which  are  more  accustomed  to  the  im- 
portunities and  sophistries  of  politicians  than  to  strong, 
clean  utterances  of  duty.  Pardon  me  if  this  seems  like  an 
intrusion.  I  write  under  the  impulse  of  the  moment." 

And  Mr.  Wayne  MacVeagh  : 

"You  will  know  without  my  telling  you,  how  thoroughly 
I  enjoyed  reading  your  noble  sermon  at  St.  Paul's.  I 
now  doubly  regret  that  a  severe  cold  denied  me  the  pleasure 
of  hearing  it. 

"Fit  words,  fitly  spoken,  in  due  season,  they  are;  but 
they  were  far  more.  They  were  an  earnest  appeal,  just 
when  such  an  appeal  was  most  needed,  to  the  enfeebled 
moral  sense  of  the  American  people,  to  arouse  itself  from 
its  vulgar  and  benumbing  self-satisfaction  long  enough  at 
least  to  see  the  awful  descent  there  has  been  from  the 
views  Washington  entertained  of  public  duty,  in  public 
office,  to  the  views  now  cynically  avowed  by  many  and 
practiced  by  many  more  —  with  the  acquiescence  of  the 
people  themselves. 

uTo  me  the  saddest  sight  of  all  has  been  the  attitude 
towards  corrupt  politics  assumed  by  so  many  clergymen  and 
so-called  religious  newspapers ;  and  I  grieve  far  more 


AT  THE   WASHINGTON   CENTENNIAL  237 

over  the  injury  they  are  doing  to  religion  than  politics. 
In  the  latter  they  have  little  or  no  influence  except  to  fur- 
nish rogues  with  excuses  for  their  corruption,  but  they  are 
dealing  awful  blows  at  the  Christian  religion.  If  only  they 
could  be  induced  to  be  as  honest  and  manly  as  the  corrupt 
politicians  they  admire,  and  quit  their  hypocrisy !  But 
this  is  doubtless  too  much  to  expect. 

"Meanwhile  such  men  as  you  will  do  much  to  counteract 
the  evil  they  are  doing.  God  bless  you,  as  He  will  for  your 
brave  and  timely  warning." 

And  Mr.  Carl  Schurz  : 

"The  more  the  newspaper  discussion  on  your  Centennial 
sermon  spreads  and  the  longer  it  continues,  the  more  are 
you  to  be  thanked  for  the  brave  and  strong  words  with 
which  you  pointed  out  the  contrast  between  the  principles 
followed  by  Washington  and  those  governing  the  l  practical 
politicians'  of  our  days.  We  have  celebrated  the  Centen- 
nial in  vain  if  that  is  not  understood.  You  and  the  country 
are  to  be  congratulated  upon  the  zeal  with  which  your 
critics  draw  popular  attention  to  it." 

The  United  States  Minister  to  Great  Britain,  Mr.  Edward 
J.  Phelps,  wrote  an  appreciative  letter. 

"I  congratulate  you  heartily  on  the  great  favor  which 
your  admirable  discourse  at  St.  Paul's  has  met  with  through- 
out the  country,  and  the  salutary  effect  it  has  had  and  seems 
likely  to  continue  to  have.  I  quite  anticipated  these  results 
when"!  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  it  at  Tuxedo. 

"The  time  has  certainly  come  for  courageous  speaking 
out  on  the  subject.  And  I  believe  the  best  intelligence  of 
the  country  will  respond  to  it. 

"I  am,  for  one,  anxious  to  see  a  concrete  movement  to 
draw  to  a  head  public  sentiment  —  irrespective  of  party  — 
in  behalf  of  a  bettei  theory  and  method  of  government. 
You  have  opened  the  way  for  it,  and  I  hope  it  will  be  pur- 
sued." 

Bishop  Clark  wrote  from  Providence  to  say  that  the 
address  reminded  him  of  Paul  rebuking  Peter.  The  New 


238  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

York  World  had  already  been  reminded  of  Nathan  rebuking 
David.  "This  is  the  crowning  glory  of  your  career/'  said 
Bishop  Clark.  "And,  as  it  is  said  here,  your  discourse 
will  be  historic,  and  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  incidents  in 
American  history." 

"At  Bar  Harbor  last  week,"  wrote  Dr.  Eliphalet  Potter, 
"a  gaunt  down-easter  accosted  me  with,  'Be  you  Bishop 
Potter,  who  spoke  up  to  them  big  dignitaries  at  the  Centen- 
nial Celebration?' 

"No,  I'm  simply  his  brother.' 

'.Wai,  I'm  glad  to  git  even  that  near  to  him.  I  keep 
them  sentiments  of  his  close  to  my  heart,  and  his  printed 
speech  too,  I  carry  along  with  me  every  time." 

An  interesting  statement  in  connection  with  the  sermon 
appears  in  Parker's  "Recollections  of  Grover  Cleveland" 
(New  York,  1909,  p.  123).  A  sentiment  of  regret,  he  says, 
for  Cleveland's  defeat  and  retirement  from  public  life, 
"was  unconsciously  promoted  by  a  remarkable  sermon 
preached  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel  by  the  late  Bishop  of  New 
York.  It  was  in  every  way  a  lofty  treatment  of  the  great 
questions  of  the  day,  but  somehow  in  the  public  mind  it 
was  associated  with  approval  of  the  President  who  had  just 
retired  and  with  condemnation  of  his  successor.  As  is 
often  the  case  with  public  sentiment  this  was  an  unfair 
inference,  but  from  it  may  be  dated  the  feeling  in  the  public 
mind,  fickle  as  it  is,  that  perhaps  an  injustice  had  been  done 
to  a  man  who  after  doing  commanding  service  was  still  in 
the  prime  of  life  and  capable  of  still  higher  work."  The 
writer  thus  attributes  to  Bishop  Potter's  sermon  that  change 
in  the  tide  of  popular  opinion  which  eventually  made  Cleve- 
land for  the  second  time  President  of  the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

IDEALS  AND   PRINCIPLES 
1889-1891 

THE  sermon  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel  gave  Bishop  Potter  a 
national  reputation.  He  was  recognized  throughout  the 
country  as  a  man  of  wisdom  to  understand  the  times,  and 
of  courage  to  express  the  convictions  based  on  that  under- 
standing. There  must  have  come  to  him  the  subtle  temp- 
tations which  beset  many  a  great  media3val  bishop,  to 
subordinate  the  details  and  even  the  special  functions  of 
his  episcopal  office,  and  to  concern  himself  with  affairs  of 
state.  He  had  the  gifts  and  abilities  which  make  men 
eminently  successful  in  that  kind  of  service.  He  had  a 
genius  for  large  leadership.  If  he  had  originally  gone  into 
politics,  no  position  in  the  country  would  have  been  too 
high  for  his  attainment.  He  must  have  understood  how 
naturally,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  cardinals  became  ambassa- 
dors, and  archbishops  prime  ministers. 

Toward  this  manner  of  life,  however,  he  showed  no 
inclination.  His  interests,  his  ambitions,  his  ideals  were 
distinctively  religious.  His  address  at  St.  Paul's  was  a 
sermon,  and  so  were  all  his  speeches  and  his  writings. 
Whatever  he  said  and  did  was  in  the  exercise  of  his  duty 
and  opportunity  as  a  Christian  minister.  His  business 
was  to  be  the  Bishop  of  New  York.  All  of  his  aspira- 
tions were  bound  up  in  the  endeavor  to  execute  that  office 
to  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  the  people.  He  in- 
terpreted his  position,  indeed,  as  inclusive  of  all  life.  His 
favorite  maxim  was  that  of  the  poet  who  declared  that 
nothing  human  was  outside  the  limits  of  his  interest  and 

239 


240  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

sympathy.  But  his  function,  as  he  understood  it,  was  to 
bring  to  bear  on  all  life  the  influence  of  religion.  He  had 
a  contribution  to  make  which  differed  from  the  endeavors 
of  political  economists,  of  men  of  affairs,  of  social  reformers 
and  of  statesmen.  He  was  to  get  the  Kingdom  of  God  in- 
creasingly established  among  men,  in  the  name  and  spirit 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

This  appears  notably  in  an  address  which  he  made  in 
January,  1890,  at  a  Commemorative  Service  of  Praise  and 
Thanksgiving  for  the  completion  of  five-and-twenty  years 
of  the  Second  Episcopate  of  the  Diocese  of  Western  New 
York.  Bishop  Coxe  having  come  to  this  milestone  in  his 
life,  Bishop  Potter  was  asked  to  speak  to  the  occasion.  He 
spoke  of  "The  Ideal  Bishop." 

He  began,  of  course,  by  expressing  his  admiration  and 
affection  for  Bishop  Coxe.  He  praised  the  straightforward 
simplicity  and  unfailing  energy  of  his  episcopate.  He 
recalled  the  comment  made  by  an  Oxford  don  upon  the 
activity  of  Bishop  Samuel  Wilberforce.  "I  recollect," 
said  the  don,  "when  a  Bishop  of  Oxford  never  drove  into 
town  without  four  horses  and  two  powdered  footmen. 
And  what  does  Sam  do?  He  gets  upon  a  horse,  without 
so  much  as  a  groom  behind  him,  and  rides  off  to  a  visita- 
tion before  breakfast."  But  as  the  address  proceeded  it 
became  plain  that  the  speaker  was  thinking  of  his  own 
ideals.  It  was  an  unconscious  disclosure  of  his  own  soul. 

"I  name  as  first,"  he  said,  among  the  qualities  of  a  good 
bishop,  "the  instinct,  the  vision  and  the  habit  of  righteous- 
ness. It  is  the  misfortune  of  place,  whether  it  be  great 
or  small,  and  alas  !  as  too  much  of  church  history  painfully 
reminds  us,  of  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  civic  place,  that  it 
conspires,  somehow,  to  blur  the  lines  that  mark  and  em- 
phasize essential  moral  distinctions.  To  love  power  rather 
than  purity,  to  seek  place  —  to  value  expediency  rather 
than  absolute  rectitude,  this  is  an  infirmity  from  which 
rulers  have  never  been  free,  whether  they  have  been  rulers 
in  Church  or  in  State.  .  .  .  And  therefore  it  is  that,  like 


IDEALS   AND    PRINCIPLES  241 

the  breath  of  a  strong  west  wind,  there  come  to  us  from 
time  to  time,  the  currents  of  some  fearless  life,  that  has  not 
only  the  courage  of  its  opinions,  but  the  candor  of  them 
-  that  in  all  great  moral  issues  '  sees  straight '  —  that  in 
the  face  of  lawlessness,  of  crafty  ecclesiastical  aggressions, 
of  social  decadence,  lifts  its  voice  like  a  trumpet,  and  makes 
men  know  that  there  is  a  man  of  God  in  the  land  who 
can  discern  between  good  and  evil,  and  who  will  not  hesi- 
tate to  warn  the  people,  'whether  they  will  hear  or  whether 
they  will  forbear." 

The  paternal  quality  was  the  second  possession  of  his 
ideal  bishop.  The  third  was  learning.  He  illustrated  them 
both  from  the  episcopate  of  Nicholas  Pavilion.  "This 
glorious  man  was  of  such  a  temper  that  when  his  pampered 
clergy,  in  an  age  of  great  luxury  and  self-indulgence,  refused 
to  visit  the  sick  and  dying,  the  poor  went  straight  to  the 
door  of  the  palace  and  appealed  to  the  Bishop  himself.  It 
was  on  one  such  occasion,  as  his  biographer  relates,  that 
waking  out  of  his  sleep,  and  hearing  that  a  dying  woman 
had  sent  for  a  vicar  who  would  not  go  to  her,  the  Bishop 
rose,  and  on  a  dark  and  tempestuous  night,  over  miry 
mountain  roads,  went  on  foot  to  minister  to  this  neglected 
member  of  his  flock  with  his  own  hands."  And  these 
labors  of  love  did  not  hinder  his  labors  of  learning.  He 
studied  Augustine  to  the  betterment  of  the  theology  not 
only  of  himself  but  of  his  time. 

A  fourth  quality  he  called  the  "glow  of  a  poetic  soul." 
"When  Jean  Valjean,  criminal,  fugitive  and  outlaw,  in 
that  matchless  portraiture  of  Victor  Hugo's,  robs  the  Bishop 
who  has  received  the  fleeing  wretch  into  his  own  palace, 
and  has  hidden  and  sheltered  him,  the  Bishop,  who,  you 
will  remember,  finds  him  in  the  act  of  making  off  with  the 
episcopal  plate,  says  to  him  gently,  'Xay,  my  son,  but 
you  have  forgotten  the  candlesticks  :  do  you  not  remember 
I  gave  them  to  you  also?'  What  is  it  now,  beside  the 
nobleness  of  the  love  that  flashed  through  this  speech,  that 
so  moves  and  touches  us?  Ah,  it  is  so  utterly  unprosaic. 

B 


242  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

It  redeems  the  vulgarity  of  the  whole  shameless  scene  by 
importing  into  it  a  new  and  higher  element.  This,  men 
and  brethren;  is  the  true  mission  of  the  poet. 

"'Well,  we  have  no  use  for  him  now/  we  say.  'This 
is  a  practical  age,  and  we  want  practical  priests,  and  prac- 
tical preachers,  and  practical  statesmen,  and  practical 
bishops.'  Truly,  we  seem  to  be  getting  very  much  what 
we  want,  —  and  all  the  finer  and  rarer  qualities  in  litera- 
ture, in  the  pulpit,  in  the  daily  ministrations  of  the  parish 
priest,  in  the  world  of  art,  and  in  the  arena  of  statesman- 
ship seem  likely  to  get  the  ' go-by'  for  the  essentially  vulgar 
gift  of  'making  things  go.' 

"And  yet,  as  one  turns  and  looks  upon  the  impress  left 
upon  the  page  of  English  ecclesiastical  history  by  such  an 
one  as  Thomas  Ken,  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  and  author 
of  those  incomparable  morning  and  evening  hymns,  he 
must  needs  ask  himself  whether  the  gift  that  has  left  its 
luminous  and  lasting  mark  on  millions  of  grateful  souls 
may  not  be  worth  coveting  and  worth  honoring." 

The  speaker  was  thinking  of  the  religious  verse  of  Bishop 
Coxe,  but  he  was  revealing  his  own  spirit.  It  becomes 
increasingly  plain,  as  one  follows  the  course  of  Bishop  Pot- 
ter's ministry,  that  he  lived  in  the  vision  of  ideals.  At  the 
heart  of  his  exceedingly  effective  methods,  of  the  business- 
like promptness  and  accuracy  of  his  administration,  and 
of  his  sound  judgment  in  affairs,  was  a  poetic  spirit.  "  This," 
he  said,  in  the  same  address,  "is  the  one  gift  that  redeems 
the  commonplace,  that  widens  the  narrowest  horizon,  that 
transmutes  the  world  itself."  It  was  this  which  gave  to 
his  habitual  speech,  whether  in  public  or  in  private,  a  cer- 
tain indefinable  grace  and  charm.  It  interested  him  in 
plain  people,  kept  him  sympathetic  with  the  problems  of 
poverty,  brought  him  into  back  streets,  and  made  him 
see  possibilities  in  social  experiments  which  other  people 
distrusted.  It  kept  him  essentially  unworldly.  No  man 
was  more  at  home  in  the  splendors  of  that  social  life  which 
his  rural  correspondent,  in  the  curious  letter  already  quoted, 


IDEALS   AND   PRINCIPLES  243 

was  so  desirous  to  see,  and  no  man  cared  less  for  it,  or  was 
less  impressed  by  it.  Money,  except  so  far  as  he  could 
avail  himself  of  it  in  the  furtherance  of  his  great  purposes, 
had  no  significance  for  him.  With  the  manners  of  an  ideal 
prince,  his  tastes  were  unfailingly  simple,  and  his  prefer- 
ences were  austere  and  abstemious.  His  Quaker  ancestry 
appeared  in  his  impatience  of  mere  externals,  in  the  direct- 
ness of  his  moral  perception,  and  in  his  gift  of  righteous 
indignation.  He  was  both  a  poet  and  a  prophet  in  his 
habit  of  seeing  life  in  the  light  of  eternity.  Thus  proceeded 
the  remaining  years  of  the  first  decade  of  his  episcopate. 

Early  in  1890,  he  wrote  to  the  Countess  of  Meath  in 
praise  of  the  work  of  the  Ministering  Children's  League : 
"To  educate  children  to  think  of  others  and  to  make  sacri- 
fices for  them  is  to  do  more  for  their  happiness  and  welfare 
than  anything  else  can  do,  unless  it  be  the  religion  of  Jesus 
Christ.  I  am  glad  to  think  that  you  have  not  failed  to 
find  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  those  who  sympathize  with 
you  in  the  Ministering  Children's  League ;  and  I  am  very 
sure  that  no  good  work  among  children,  whatever  may 
be  the  name  it  bears,  can  be  otherwise  than  helped  and 
quickened  by  the  movement  which  you  are  seeking  to  pro- 
mote. May  God  abundantly  bless  and  prosper  it." 

In  March  he  discussed  in  the  Tribune  the  "Rural  Reen- 
forcement  of  Cities,"  and  urged  upon  the  rich  the  duty 
of  improving  and  uplifting  that  country  life  out  of  which 
year  by  year  youth  were  coming  to  the  great  centres  of 
population.  "You  cannot  have  a  college,"  he  said,  "or 
even  a  high  school,  in  every  village  or  at  every  cross-road ; 
but  it  would  not  be  impossible  to  multiply  centres  of  illu- 
mination such  as  were  typified  by  the  district-school  libraries 
of  forty  or  fifty  years  ago.  It  is  just  here  that  such  an 
institution  as  Mudie's  circulating  library,  which  sends 
books  in  parcels  all  over  England,  and  collects  them  weekly 
or  monthly,  has  considerable  suggestive  value.  The  smaller 
centres,  country  towns  and  railway  stations,  from  which 
the  ordinary  commodities  of  life  are  distributed,  might 


244  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

well  be  centres  of  distribution  for  food  and  furniture  of  a 
higher  order.  And  then,  in  connection  with  some  lyceum 
erected  by  the  munificence  of  some  native  of  the  neighbor- 
hood who  has  made  his  fortune  in  some  metropolis,  we 
might  wisely  revive  the  lecture  course  of  thirty  or  forty 
years  ago." 

This  suggestion  he  extended  to  the  endowment  of  religion 
in  the  country.  "It  is  certainly  not  amiss  that  ministers 
should  be  partially  dependent  upon  their  people.  It  is 
not  desirable  that  any  one  who  is  set  as  a  preacher  and 
teacher  of  righteousness  should  be  absolutely  so.  There 
is  a  painful  page  of  our  American  religious  history,  just 
here,  which  at  this  moment  I  do  not  care  to  turn.  'Thou 
shalt  not  muzzle  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn';  but 
too  often  there  is  no  remonstrance  when  insolent  wealth, 
sitting  in  the  vestry  or  in  the  session  or  in  the  pews,  threatens 
to  'stop  the  supplies/  and  so  effectually  muzzle  the  mouth 
of  the  anointed  witness  for  God  and  duty  and  righteous 
dealing.  We  should  have  a  higher  type  of  manhood,  of 
rectitude,  of  purity,  of  political  and  personal  honesty  in 
Wall  Street  and  in  Albany,  if  we  could  have  a  higher  type 
of  truth-speaking  and  God-fearing  manhood  for  the  pulpits 
of  the  land.  Here  is  a  chance  for  wealth.  Let  it  endow 
some  rural  pulpits,  and  then  leave  the  trust  in  wise  and 
faithful  hands  that  will  see  that  it  is  wisely  administered. 
Imagine  such  an  endowment  committed  to  the  wisdom 
and  integrity  that  to-day  administer  so  many  American 
colleges.  It  might  even  be  entrusted  occasionally  to  a 
bishop!" 

In  June,  1890,  at  Harvard  University,  he  delivered  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  on  "The  Scholar  and  the  State." 
He  quoted  from  Plato's  "Republic"  the  comment  of  Adei- 
mantus  on  the  citizen  who  finds  himself  in  surroundings 
uncongenial  and  unworthy,  and  who  under  those  conditions 
maintains  the  integrity  of  his  soul.  "He  is  like  one  who 
retires  under  the  shelter  of  a  wall  in  the  storm  of  dust  and 
sleet  which  the  driving  wind  hurries  along ;  and  when  he 


IDEALS   AND   PRINCIPLES  245 

sees  the  rest  of  mankind  full  of  wickedness,  he  is  content  if 
only  he  can  live  his  own  life  and  be  pure  from  evil  or  un- 
righteousness, and  depart  in  peace  with  bright  hopes.  He 
who  does  this,"  says  Adeimantus,  "will  have  done  a  great 
work  before  he  departs."  "Yes,"  answers  Socrates,  "but 
not  the  greatest,  unless  he  find  a  state  suitable  to  him ;  for 
in  a  state  suitable  to  him  he  will  have  a  larger  growth,  and 
be  the  saviour  of  his  country  as  well  as  of  himself." 

The  Bishop  urged  the  scholars  to  whom  he  spoke  to  under- 
take this  greatest  service.  One  of  the  needs  of  the  nation, 
he  said,  is  the  constant  exaltation  of  high  ideals  of  domestic 
and  commercial  and  industrial  and  political  righteousness. 
Another  need  is  the  lifting  up  of  all  the  people,  by  patient 
processes  of  education,  to  the  standards  of  those  to  whom 
these  high  ideals  are  precious.  "The  community  of  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa,"  he  said,  "is  supposed  to  represent  the 
flower  of  our  American  Colleges.  For  now  more  than  a 
century  it  has  enrolled  among  its  associates  those  whose 
gifts  and  attainments  have  earned  for  them,  during  their 
college  life,  the  highest  recognition.  Surely  such  distinc- 
tion ought  to  illustrate  itself  in  unselfish  service  for  the 
state.  From  this,  no  preoccupation  with  other  cares  can 
wholly  excuse  any  one  of  us ;  and  it  is  impossible  not  to 
own  that  in  such  a  trained  force,  if  once  it  should  arouse 
itself  to  its  opportunity,  the  highest  interests  of  the  nation 
might  rightly  look  to  find  their  best  defenders.  It  is  not 
criticism,  mainly  or  largely,  that  we  want,  nor  is  it  organiza- 
tion. Of  the  latter,  with  its  easy  loss  of  the  sense  of  personal 
responsibility,  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  have  not  too  much 
already.  It  is  individual  service,  personal  influence,  the 
sense  of  solitary  responsibility,  the  outspoken  word,  the 
courageous  stand,  the  helpful  suggestion  or  warning,  when- 
ever these  may  dispel  ignorance,  or  strengthen  resistance 
to  evil,  or  stimulate  to  honest  endeavor." 

He  made  the  subject  of  this  address  the  title  of  a  col- 
lection of  speeches  and  essays.  ("The  Scholar  and  the 
State,"  1897.)  The  matter  was  much  in  his  thoughts. 


246  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

His  official  journal  makes  frequent  mention  of  sermons 
at  colleges.  He  was  in  the  position  of  seeing  at  the  same 
time  the  operations  of  the  war  against  ignorance  and  vice, 
and  the  regiments  of  reserves  mustering  at  the  schools  of 
higher  learning,  and  waiting  to  be  mobilized.  He  per- 
ceived with  strong  disapproval  the  disinclination  of  many 
of  these  young  men  to  fight.  He  saw  that  in  the  war  against 
the  devil  many  of  them  took  a  safe  position  of  selfish  neu- 
trality ;  some  were  on  the  devil's  side.  He  felt  it  a  part 
of  his  mission  to  inspire  in  these  youths  his  own  social 
and  religious  enthusiasm.  He  tried  to  enlist  the  scholar 
in  the  ranks. 

Thus  he  wrote  a  paper  in  the  Forum  on  "The  Scholar 
in  American  Life"  (July,  1889).  He  protested  against 
the  utilitarianism  which  values  ideas  according  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  they  may  be  applied  to  the  betterment  of 
the  material  side  of  life,  and  used  in  making  money.  "The 
scholar,"  he  said,  "contributes  not  to  the  comfort  and 
convenience  but  to  the  spiritual  quality  of  the  nation. 
To  do  this  aright  he  must  have  the  aid  of  time  and  silence. 
If  he  is  to  inform  our  general  ignorance,  and  solve  our  hard 
problems,  he  must  be  able  to  give  his  attention  wholly  to 
these  great  matters."  The  Bishop,  who  had  suggested  the 
endowment  of  the  country  preacher,  urged  now  the  endow- 
ment of  the  scholar.  "No  one,"  he  said,  "can  imagine 
a  nobler  opportunity  than  comes  to  him  who  has  it  in  his 
power  to  go  to  some  such  seeker  after  truth,  and  take  him 
by  the  hand,  and  say  :  'Here  is  leisure  ;  here  is  retirement ; 
here  are  books  and  implements.  Be  at  ease  here  in  this 
scholar's  home,  and  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  light.  I 
do  not  bid  you  hurry  your  tasks  or  force  your  powers. 
And  when  at  length  you  have  a  word  to  speak  to  your  age, 
come  forth,  and  in  the  name  of  God  and  His  truth,  be  not 
afraid  to  speak  it." 

His  oration  at  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  Union 
Collogo  (June  27,  1805)  was  on  "Scholarship  and  Service." 
He  questioned  whether  the  colleges,  with  all  their  advance 


IDEALS  AND   PRINCIPLES  247 

in  pedagogical  discipline,  have  even  yet  succeeded  in  teach- 
ing men  to  think.  With  that  felicity  of  quotation  which 
was  characteristic  of  him;  he  cited  a  passage  of  Schopen- 
hauer's essay  "On  Men  of  Learning."  "When  I  hear  of 
these  portents  of  learning/'  said  the  philosopher,  "and  their 
imposing  erudition,  I  say  to  myself,  'Ah,  how  little  they 
must  have  had  to  think  about,  to  be  able  to  read  so  much  ! ' 
And  when  I  actually  find  that  it  is  reported  of  the  elder 
Pliny  that  he  was  continually  reading  or  being  read  to, 
at  table,  on  a  journey,  or  in  his  bath,  the  question  forces 
itself  upon  my  mind  whether  the  man  was  so  very  lacking 
in  thought  that  he  had  to  have  other  thoughts  incessantly 
instilled  into  him,  as  though  he  were  a  consumptive  patient 
taking  jellies  to  keep  himself  alive."  The  college,  said  the 
speaker,  "should  be  the  training-school  not  merely  of 
learners  but  of  thinkers ;  and  the  men  whom  it  graduates," 
he  added,  "  should  be  the  leaders  not  merely  in  successful 
enterprise  and  in  purely  technical  ability,  but  in  those 
sounder  ideas  of  civic  and  social  and  moral  order  of  which 
the  greatest  nations  have  yet  so  much  to  learn." 

Concerned  thus  for  truth  and  for  service,  it  was  the 
desire  of  Bishop  Potter  that  the  Episcopal  Church  should 
be  so  administered  as  to  leave  men  free  to  follow  truth 
wherever  it  even  seemed  to  lead,  and  to  serve  their  genera- 
tion in  ways  as  varied  as  the  needs  of  the  community  and 
as  the  temperaments  of  those  who  ministered  to  them. 
Preaching  at  the  consecration  of  St.  Mary's  Memorial 
Church,  Wayne,  Pennsylvania  (Churchman,  July  5th,  1890), 
he  described  the  characteristics  of  that  "evangelical"  party 
to  which  the  persons  there  commemorated  had  belonged. 
"It  is  the  fashion,"  he  said,  "to  speak  of  that  school  as 
well-nigh  extinct,  and  to  dismiss  its  characteristics  as  super- 
annuated and  eccentric  peculiarities  which  have  no  vital 
relation  to  the  Church's  inheritance  or  the  Church's  life. 
There  was  never  a  more  impudent  or  more  superficial  mis- 
statement."  "I  am  not  one  of  those,"  he  added,  "whom 
it  more  immediately  affects,  and  I  am,  neither  by  in- 


248  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

heritance  nor  conviction,  in  very  intimate  sympathy  with 
the  particular  institutions  or  organizations  which  have 
incarnated  it." 

The  statement  would  have  interested  his  teachers  in  the 
Virginia  Seminary,  and  would  have  perplexed  his  former 
parishioners  in  Troy.  It  is  hard  to  reconcile  with  the 
"distinctively  evangelical"  position  about  which  in  1868 
he  wrote  to  Dr.  Dyer.  Both  by  inheritance  and  by  early 
conviction  he  had  been  more  closely  connected  with  this 
school  than  with  any  other.  It  is  true,  however,  that  his 
favorite  descriptive  adjective,  in  the  spirit  of  his  father, 
was  not  "evangelical"  but  "comprehensive."  That  was 
the  ideal  of  the  church  which  he  had  held  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  from  which  he  never  departed.  As  the  years  of 
his  ministry  proceeded  he  came  to  appreciate  the  value  of 
ways  of  thinking  and  of  modes  of  worship  with  which  he 
had  been  imperfectly  acquainted.  He  suggested,  in  his 
sermon,  that  such  progress  is  essential  to  the  right  life  of  the 
Church  itself.  "It  is  the  office  of  a  living  Church,"  he  said, 
"not  to  stand  still  but  to  go  forward." 

Upon  this  statement  he  enlarged.  "There  are  dear  and 
honored  brethren  to  whom  I  speak  to-day,  who  have  doubt- 
less listened  to  me  thus  far  with  something  of  suspicion, 
and  possibly  something  more  of  dismay.  They  hate  com- 
promise with  error,  as  they  call  it,  and  they  distrust,  it 
may  be,  most  of  all,  the  counsels  of  one  who  is  pledged, 
as  they  imagine,  by  his  very  position,  to  a  gospel  of  com- 
promises under  all  possible  circumstances.  Believe  me, 
dear  brethren,  you  were  never  more  mistaken  in  your  lives. 
I  detest  compromises  as  heartily,  and  I  venture  to  think 
I  have  shunned  them  as  consistently,  as  any  of  you.  But 
I  do  believe  in  comprehension,  and  in  comprehension  most 
of  all  of  all  who  are  moved  by  loyalty  to  Christ  and  love 
for  His  lost  ones,  whether  these,  traits  illustrate  themselves 
in  the  school  of  Simeon  or  in  the  school  of  Kcble." 

This  principle  of  comprehension,  the  Bishop  applied  to 
the  current  perplexities  of  the  Church.  In  a  Charge  to 


IDEALS   AND    PRINCIPLES  249 

his  diocese  in  1891,  he  discussed  the  relation  of  the  clergy 
to  the  Church's  faith  and  order. 

The  anxieties  of  conservative  Churchmen  in  the  early 
nineties  had  been  transferred  from  the  perils  of  ritual  in- 
novation to  the  perils  of  the  higher  criticism.  The  ap- 
pearance of  "Lux  Mundi,"  in  1899,  had  caused  alarm  in 
America  as  well  as  in  England.  The  situation  was  like 
that  which  had  followed,  in  I860,  the  publication  of  "Es- 
says and  Reviews."  The  new  generation  seemed  to  have 
learned  little  from  that  encouraging  experience.  They 
were  as  ready  as  their  predecessors  to  expect  that  the 
Church,  undermined  by  heretics,  would  come  tumbling 
down  about  their  ears.  They  were  haunted  by  the  spectres 
of  hypocritical  priests  who  with  one  hand  were  pulling, 
like  Samson,  at  the  pillars  of  the  temple,  while  with  the 
other  they  were  holding  fast  what  the  controversial  writers 
used  to  like  to  call  their  "emoluments."  The  fact  that 
Temple,  whose  "essay"  had  excited  great  alarm,  had  be- 
come Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  did  not  suggest  to  their 
minds  the  least  possibility  that  Gore,  whose  chapter  on 
"The  Holy  Spirit  and  Inspiration"  they  particularly  dis- 
liked, might  presently  become  Bishop  of  Oxford. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  it  was  a  trying  time  for  nervous 
persons.  Heber  Newton  had  again  so  offended  the  orthodox 
that  they  appealed  to  the  Bishop  to  put  him  under  the 
penalty  of  silence.  It  seemed  the  only  effective  answer  to 
his  disconcerting  lectures.  In  Ohio,  in  1890,  the  Rev. 
Howard  MacQueary  had  published  a  book  entitled  "Evolu- 
tion of  Man  and  Christianity."  The  writer  began  with  a 
quotation  from  Professor  Le  Conte,  who  said,  "There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  we  are  now  on  the  eve  of  the  greatest 
change  in  traditional  views  that  has  taken  place  since  the 
birth  of  Christianity.  This  change  means  not  a  read- 
justment of  details  only  but  a  reconstruction  of  Christian 
theology."  Mr.  MacQueary  believed  it.  "It  is  because 
I  am  profoundly  convinced  of  the  truth  of  these  profound 
words,"  he  said,  "that  I  have  written  this  book."  He 


250  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

maintained  his  moral  right  to  say  the  creeds  in  their  ac- 
customed words  with  interpretations  of  his  own.  That 
freedom  of  departure  from  the  letter  of  the  creed  which  is 
commonly  exercised  concerning  "the  resurrection  of  the 
body/'  he  proposed  to  extend  to  the  miraculous  birth  and 
to  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  He  was  eventually  suspended, 
and  resigned  his  ministry,  but  only  after  a  long  discussion 
which  tried  the  souls  of  many  honest  men.  The  suspicion 
of  a  preceding  generation  that  there  was  an  aggressive 
party  of  high  churchmen,  holding  secret  conference,  and 
plotting  to  betray  the  Episcopal  Church  to  the  Pope  of 
Rome,  was  exchanged  for  the  counter  suspicion  that  there 
was  a  militant  party  of  broad  churchmen  who  with  the 
same  secrecy  were  abandoning  the  faith,  and  were  privately 
poisoning  the  minds  of  the  faithful  with  the  errors  of  the 
Unitarians.  Bishop  Gillespie  of  Western  Michigan  was 
certain  of  it.  " There  is  a  party  in  the  Church,"  he  said, 
"holding  the  articles  of  the  faith  in  a  sense  which  the  word- 
ing of  the  Creed  does  not  allow ;  men  who  have  disposed  of 
conscience  in  regard  to  ordination  vows ;  clergymen  who 
teach  Unitarianism." 

Not  the  faith  only  but  the  order  of  the  Church  seemed  to 
be  in  danger.  There  had  been  a  time,  in  Bishop  Hobart's 
vigorous  days,  when  the  Episcopal  parsons  in  little  New 
York  towns  were  sometimes  called  by  the  irreverent,  "Old 
Apostolic  Succession,"  because  they  preached  on  that  subject 
almost  every  Sunday ;  but  now  there  was  not  only  an  omi- 
nous avoidance  of  the  theme  in  the  pulpit,  but  clergymen 
of  eminence  were  suspected  of  speaking  disrespectfully  of  it 
in  private.  Edwin  Hatch's  Bampton  Lectures  of  1881, 
on  "The  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches," 
had  been  followed  by  his  Hibbert  Lectures  of  1888,  on 
"The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  on  the  Christian 
Church."  These  discourses  divested  the  episcopate  of  all 
supernatural  elements,  and  found  its  origin  in  a  prudent 
adaptation  of  local  customs.  In  1891,  a  numerously  signed 
remonstrance  of  New  York  clergy  protested  to  the  Bishop 


llKXRY    (,'UDMAX    1'oTTKH 

1S66-1SG3 


IDEALS  AND   PRINCIPLES  251 

against  the  spreading  practice  of  inviting  into  Episcopal 
pulpits  persons  not  episcopally  ordained,  thereby  causing 
scandal  and  giving  pain  to  many.  Several  clergymen  had 
given  much  offence  by  taking  part  in  the  installation  of 
the  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott  as  pastor  of  the  Plymouth  Church, 
in  Brooklyn. 

Under  these  conditions  Bishop  Potter,  in  his  Charge, 
addressed  the  clergy  of  his  Diocese. 

He  distinguished  between  the  clergy  and  the  laity  in 
the  matter  of  requirements  of  belief.  For  the  laity  the 
Apostles'  Creed  suffices.  Such  a  person  being  asked  as  a 
test  of  fitness  for  baptism,  "  Do  you  accept  unreservedly 
and  literally,  as  scientifically  true,  the  Biblical  account  of 
the  six  days  of  creation?"  or  "Do  you  not  reject  the  doc- 
trine of  a  tactual  succession  in  the  ministry  as  a  vain  super- 
stition?" may  properly  decline  to  answer  questions  which 
in  his  case  are  "a  bold  impertinence."  But  the  clerical 
position  is  different.  The  deacon  signs  a  declaration  of 
his  belief  in  the  canonical  Scriptures  as  the  "word  of  God." 
The  priest  solemnly  promises  to  "minister  the  doctrine 
and  sacraments  and  discipline  of  Christ  as  the  Lord  hath 
commanded  and  as  this  Church  hath  received  the  same." 
Newman,  indeed,  in  Tract  XC,  attempted  to  show  how  the 
formulas  of  the  Church  could  be  so  interpreted  as  to  admit 
most  of  the  doctrines  which  they  were  intended  to  reject ; 
and  a  like  casuistry  to-day  would  bring  in  Rationalism  by 
the  same  subterranean  passage  which  Newman  constructed 
for  the  benefit  of  Romanism.  Newman,  however,  found 
that  the  Church  would  not  admit  the  liberty  of  interpre- 
tation which  he  claimed.  The  Church  is  of  the  same  opinion 
touching  any  similar  claim  for  any  purpose  similar  or  dis- 
similar. 

The  Bishop  accordingly  advised  the  clergyman  who 
cannot  accept  the  faith  or  conform  to  the  order  of  the 
Church  to  "retire  from  the  exercise  of  his  sacred  office, 
and  address  himself  with  prayer  and  abstinence,  and  most 
searching  and  candid  inquiry,  to  an  examination  of  the 


252  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

question  or  questions  at  issue."  If  the  result  of  such  exam- 
ination is  to  confirm  him  in  his  negative  opinion,  "then  I  am 
unable  to  see  how,  honestly,  his  office  and  he  can  do  otherwise 
than  part  company."  In  this  connection  the  Bishop  made 
the  customary  remarks  about  "emoluments." 

The  Charge,  thus  far,  gave  comfort  and  assurance  to 
the  conservatives,  and  appeared  to  be  for  the  grave  ad- 
monition of  such  as  Dr.  Newton,  with  his  ideas  about  the 
Bible  and  the  Creed,  and  of  such  as  Dr.  Donald,  with  his 
recognition  of  the  validity  of  non-episcopal  orders  and 
sacraments.  But  the  principle  of  comprehension  was 
presently  perceived  to  take  even  such  offenders  in. 

Even  Mr.  MacQueary  must  have  read  with  some  per- 
plexity the  statement  that  the  Creeds  "do  not  shut  out 
a  certain  latitude  of  construction,  e.g.  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  resurrection  body,  concerning  which  a  great  deal 
of  so-called  Christian  and  Churchly  teaching  has  been 
so  grossly  material  as  to  make  one  wonder  if  those  who 
were  responsible  for  it  had  ever  heard  of  Chapter  XV  of 
St.  Paul's  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians."  This  was 
what  Mr.  MacQueary  had  contended,  and  for  this  con- 
tention had  been  punished.  But  the  remainder  of  the 
paragraph  reassured  the  orthodox:  "Yet,  unless  those 
formularies  may  rightfully  be  subjected  to  a  treatment 
which  any  candid  mind,  unacquainted  with  theological 
controversies,  would  unhesitatingly  pronounce  to  be  utterly 
sophistical  and  disingenuous,  they  would  seem  to  compel 
from  those  who  are  pledged  to  hold  and  teach  them,  so 
long  as  they  are  willing  to  remain  so  pledged,  an  assent 
and  acceptance  in  that  sense  and  only  in  that  sense  in 
which,  universally  and  without  question,  this  Church  hath 
received  the  same." 

Then  as  to  orders.  The  Bishop  recited  the  statements 
which  are  made  in  the  preface  to  the  ordinal.  He  con- 
sidered the  inviting  of  other  ministers  into  our  pulpits  as 
a  matter  both  of  canonical  irregularity  and  of  doubtful  edi- 
fication. "I  can  very  well  understand,"  he  said,  "the  desire 


IDEALS  AND   PRINCIPLES  253 

to  bring  in  eminent  teachers  of  other  communions,  though 
I  have  never  at  any  period  of  my  ministry  found  myself 
seriously  tempted  to  yield  to  it."  He  said  that  he  was 
not  convinced  by  the  arguments  of  Dr.  Hatch.  At  the 
same  time  he  commented  with  some  asperity  upon  those 
who  had  been  trying  to  defeat  the  confirmation  of  Phillips 
Brooks  as  Bishop  of  Massachusetts  on  the  ground  of  his 
views  about  the  ministry.  "The  effort  which  we  have 
lately  seen  in  this  Church  to  defeat  the  confirmation  of 
an  eminent  presbyter  elected  to  the  episcopate,  and  to 
defeat  it  by  methods  which,  in  the  judgment  of  all  decent 
people,  ought  to  redound  to  the  lasting  dishonor  of  those 
who  employ  them,  was  an  effort  ostensibly  to  compass 
that  defeat  on  grounds  of  theological  unsoundness,  but 
really,  so  far  as  it  had  any  respectable  championship, 
because  the  individual  concerned  did  not  happen  to  hold 
a  prevalent  view  of  the  apostolic  succession.  It  does  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  such  persons  that  a  different  view 
was  long  held  by  the  venerated  and  saintly  man  who  was, 
for  the  first  fifty  years  of  its  history,  the  presiding  bishop 
of  this  Church,  and  that  William  White  was  by  no  means 
the  only  presiding  bishop  that  held  such  a  view.  It  seems 
quite  as  little  to  have  occurred  to  them  that,  if  such  a  view 
be  a  positive  disqualification  for  the  episcopate,  it  would 
have  excluded  scores  of  men  from  the  House  of  Bishops, 
some  of  whom  lent  to  it  much  of  the  noblest  lustre  with 
which  it  has  ever  shone.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred 
to  them,  either,  that  what  is  true  of  the  American  is  quite 
as  true  of  the  Anglican  Church.  Least  of  all  does  it  seem 
to  have  occurred  to  them  that  this  endeavor  to  force  the 
view  of  one  party  or  school  as  a  finality  upon  the  whole 
Church  is  simply  so  much  partisan  insolence.  But  it  is 
high  time  that  at  least  that  much  did  occur  to  them !  We 
may  regret,  dear  brethren,  as  I  am  quite  free  to  say  I  do, 
that  any  man  called  to  a  high  and  sacred  office  does  not 
see  its  sanctions  and  trace  its  authority  along  the  lines 
that  seem  so  clear  to  us.  But  an  intelligent  recognition 


254  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

of  the  relations  of  the  clergy  to  questions  of  ecclesiastical 
order  in  our  time  demands  that  we  must  recognize  the 
liberty;  as  well  as  the  limitations,  which  pertain  to  every 
man  among  them." 

"We  want  defenders  of  the  Church's  liberty/'  he  said 
in  closing,  "as  well  as  defenders  of  the  church's  orthodoxy, 
and  we  want  on  this  point,  on  the  part  of  the  episcopate, 
a  candor  in  leadership  which  honest  men  have,  from  those 
who  are  over  them,  a  right  to  look  for.  There  is  a  divine 
doctrine,  but  let  us  take  care  that  in  defining  it  we  do  not 
make  it  narrower  than  Christ  Himself  has  made  it.  There 
is  a  divine  order,  but  let  us  not  seek  only  so  inexorably 
to  enforce  it  that,  like  those  iron  images  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  shall  crush  the  life  out  of  the  victim  whom  it  em- 
braces. The  question  for  us  who  are  ministers  of  this 
Church  is  how  the  two  sides  of  its  truth  arc  to  be  united 
in  that  kind  of  churchmanship  which  shall  stand  for  all 
the  sanctities  of  the  individual  soul  in  the  sanctity  of  the 
Church  itself." 

"Authority  and  reason,"  he  added,  "order  and  freedom, 
spirit  and  form,  this  is  the  true  definition  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  of  the  churchmanship  which  our  times  want 
-because  all  times  want  it." 

The  Charge  reads  in  some  parts  like  the  sic  ct  non  of  the 
schoolmen,  first  on  this  side,  then  on  that.  The  broad 
churchmen  liked  it,  and  so  did  the  high  churchmen.  It 
was  Dr.  Dix  who  moved  that  two  thousand  copies  should 
be  printed  for  distribution.  This  sympathetic  inclusion  of 
both  sides  opened  the  address  to  the  criticism  of  partisans. 
The  Catholic  Episcopalians,  claiming  Bishop  Potter  as 
their  champion,  were  confused  and  annoyed  by  expressions 
which  seemed  to  ally  the  speaker  with  the  dangerous  doc- 
trines of  the  broad  churchmen.  The  Protestant  Epis- 
copalians, on  the  other  side,  with  equal  confidence  claiming 
Bishop  Potter  as  their  spokesman,  were  perplexed  by  the 
strictness  of  his  adherence  to  the  formulas  of  the  Church, 
and  by  his  emphasis  on  the  duty  of  canonical  obedience. 


IDEALS  AND   PRINCIPLES  255 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  as  Bishop  Potter  saw  with 
remarkable  clearness,  there  are  actual  existing  differences 
in  the  Church,  partly  doctrinal  but  still  more  temperamental, 
and  behind  these  differences,  on  the  one  side  as  on  the  other, 
are  everlasting  truths.  They  are  as  mutually  contradictory, 
but  as  individually  valid,  as  the  divine  omnipotence  and 
the  freedom  of  the  human  will,  or  as  the  doctrine  of  the 
infinity  and  the  doctrine  of  the  personality  of  God.  The 
high  churchman  is  mainly  right,  though  tempted  to  error 
in  detail ;  and  the  low  churchman  and  the  broad  churchman 
are  mainly  right,  though  liable  to  make  mistakes.  They  are, 
for  the  most  part,  right  in  their  affirmations,  and  wrong  in 
their  negations.  To  hold  them  together  in  fraternity  is 
the  achievement  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  Bishop  Potter 
held  them  together  in  the  clearness  of  his  own  judgment, 
in  the  breadth  of  his  own  convictions,  and  in  the  honest 
hospitality  of  his  instinctive  sympathies. 

Impatient  people,  most  of  whom  had  only  one  eye,  com- 
plained of  him  that  he  was  on  both  sides.  He  was  on  both 
sides,  because  he  revered  the  truth  wherever  he  found  it, 
and  he  saw  that  neither  side  had  a  monopoly  of  it.  He 
represented  in  this  respect  the  best  qualities  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church.  The  fact  made  him  a  good  bishop  of  a 
great  diocese.  He  was  able  to  appreciate  the  value  of  an 
earnest  ministry  under  all  kinds  of  conditions.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  his  administration  that  while  on  the  one  hand 
he  stopped  certain  lectures  of  Dr.  Newton,  and  on  the 
other  hand  he  stopped  certain  services  of  Mr.  Ritchie,  at 
the  same  time  he  protected  Dr.  Newton  against  heresy- 
hunters,  and  assisted  Mr.  Ritchie  to  build  a  new  church, 
and  both  men  gave  him  the  tribute  of  their  confidence  and 
affection. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION 

1891-1895 

THE  correspondence  of  Bishop  Potter  shows  that  he  was 
both  patient  and  peremptory.  Sometimes  one  of  these 
qualities  was  dominant,  sometimes  the  other. 

His  letters  reflect,  in  this  regard,  his  customary  dealings 
with  his  fellowmen.  Nobody  could  be  more  courteous  or 
approachable ;  nobody  could  meet  his  neighbors  with  more 
grace  and  charm  of  manner.  Nevertheless,  when  he  chose, 
-  and  sometimes  without  choosing,  —  he  bore  himself  with 
a  dignity)  remote  and  frigid,  which  suggested  a  steep  and 
lofty  mountain  crowned  with  snow.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, —  due  for  the  most  part  to  displeasure,  and  ex- 
pressive of  indignation,  —  he  spoke,  as  he  wrote,  with 
uncompromising  directness.  He  had  ready  for  such  oc- 
casions a  collection  of  serviceable  adjectives.  He  liked 
to  make  himself  unmistakably  understood. 

His  facility  in  this  matter  was  evident  in  various  differ- 
ences of  opinion. 

A  misunderstanding  which  arose  in  the  summer  of  1891 
is  explained  in  a  letter  to  Bishop  Doane. 

"Your  friend,  Mr.  Spencer  Trask,  has,  I  understand, 
written  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Carey  of  Saratoga  in  somewhat 
severe  terms  with  reference  to  his  action  in  the  matter  of 
my  proposed  address  before  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association.  This  I  have  learned  not  at  all  from  Dr.  Carey 
himself :  but  I  am  glad  to  know  it,  because  it  gives  me  an 
opportunity  of  communicating  some  facts  with  which 

256 


DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION  257 

neither  Mr.  Trask  nor  yourself  (to  whom,  I  understand, 
Mr.  Trask  has  spoken  on  the  subject)  may  be  familiar. 

"Some  months  ago,  I  received  an  invitation  from  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  of  Saratoga  to  speak 
at  its  Anniversary.  This  invitation  I  accepted,  having  a 
somewhat  indefinite  recollection  that  I  had  received  a 
similar  one  some  years  ago  from  Albany  —  had  written 
to  you  as  to  accepting  it  —  and  had  heard  from  you,  in 
substance,  that  while  you  would  have  been  glad  if  I  were 
coming  to  speak  for  the  Church,  you  had  no  desire  to  inter- 
pose any  objection.  Some  two  weeks  before  the  Saratoga 
Anniversary,  however,  I  thought  it  best  to  write  directly 
to  Dr.  Carey,  and  received  the  following  note : 

Saratoga  Springs, 

July  17th,  1891. 
My  dear  Bishop, 

Your  favor  of  the  15th  inst.  has  just  been  received. 
I  thank  you  for  your  kind  consideration  with  reference 
to  your  proposed  address  before  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Allow 
me  to  say  that,  though  I  do  not  myself  participate  in 
their  services,  I  should  not  wish  you  to  omit  it  on  my 
account. 

Last  winter  I  gave  a  cordial  and  standing  invitation 
to  the  Association  to  come  to  the  Church,  where  I  would  be 
glad  to  address  them.  As  yet,  it  has  not  been  accepted. 

The  newspaper  of  to-day  announces  that  you  are  to 
be  one  of  the  speakers  at  the  Anniversary  on  the  evening 
of  Sunday,  the  26th  inst.  I  shall  be  glad  to  have  you  preach 
for  us  on  the  morning  of  the  26th,  and  also  at  any  other 
time  while  you  are  in  town. 

Believe  me.  my  dear  Bishop,  as  always, 

Faithfully  yours, 

Joseph  Carey. 

Two  days  later  this  letter  was  followed  by  that  which  I 
give  below : 


258  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Saratoga  Springs, 

July  19th,  1891. 
My  dear  Bishop, 

Reflecting  more  fully  on  your  very  gracious  note  and 
kind  inquiry,  which  I  heartily  appreciate,  I  may  say  that 
I  fear  your  presence  at  the  Anniversary  here  in  Saratoga 
on  the  evening  of  the  26th  inst.  would  be  misunderstood, 
and  might  weaken  our  hands,  as  the  great  weight  of  your 
name  and  office  would  be  quoted  in  the  future  to  the  dis- 
advantage of  the  parish. 

We  are  peculiarly  situated  in  Saratoga.  The  Church 
has  had  to  struggle  single-handed  for  what  she  has  gained, 
and  her  position,  which  is  one  of  conservation,  is  now  well 
understood  and  respected. 

I  ought  to  say  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Holcombe  expects  to 
be  with  us  on  the  evening  of  the  26th  to  present  the  claims 
of  the  Clergyman's  R.  F.  S.  [Retiring  Fund  Society].  As 
our  service  will  be  at  the  hour  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Anni- 
versary, which  will  be  in  the  Methodist  Church,  our  choir 
and  congregation  will  be  diminished  somewhat  in  conse- 
quence. 

Thanking  you  again  for  your  loving  confidence, 

I   am,   as   always, 

Faithfully  yours, 

Joseph  Carey. 

"So  soon  as  I  received  this,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Atwater, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Association,  withdrawing  my  acceptance 
of  his  invitation,  and  advising  Dr.  Carey  that  I  had  done  so. 
Some  time  afterwards  Air.  Atwater  wrote  me  that  he  had 
seen  Dr.  Carey,  and  that  Dr.  Carey  had  assured  him  that 
my  coming  to  Saratoga  to  speak  for  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  was  a  matter  of  indifference  to  him. 
I  was  quite  sure  that  Mr.  Atwater  had  either  misunder- 
stood or  misrepresented  Dr.  Carey,  and  wrote  him  some- 
what briefly  (and  perhaps  tartly)  to  that  effect,  referring 


DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION  259 

him  to  Dr.  Carey  for  the  confirmation  of  my  original  state- 
ment, which  I  reiterated.  This  correspondence,  Mr.  At- 
water,  without  any  authority,  turned  over  to  a  reporter  of 
the  New  York  Sun.  I  have  myself  no  doubt  as  to  his 
motive  in  doing  so.  He  saw  that  it  would  put  Dr.  Carey 
in  a  bad  light,  and  make  him  appear  hostile  to  the  Associa- 
tion, and  he  followed  up  this  dishonorable  publication  of  a 
private  correspondence  by  communicating  it  to  Mr.  Trask, 
in  order  to  embitter  Mr.  Trask  against  Dr.  Carey. 

"I  wish  to  say,  therefore,  in  the  most  explicit  terms,  that 
in  my  judgment  Dr.  Carey  was  entirely  justified  in  his 
action.  That  action  did  not  turn  upon  his  attitude  to 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  but  upon  the 
question  of  the  effect  which  my  speaking  in  Saratoga  on 
a  particular  evening,  July  26th,  would  have  upon  a  special 
service,  with  a  special  preacher  and  a  special  collection, 
appointed  in  his  church  for  that  evening ;  and  he  was 
bound,  I  think,  to  protect  the  interests  and  obligations  of 
his  own  parish. 

"There  is  no  doubt,  moreover,  that  persons  connected 
with  the  Association  have  endeavored  to  obstruct  Dr. 
Carey's  work  among  young  men,  have  broken  up  the  St. 
Andrew's  Brotherhood,  and  enticed  away  boys  who  were 
more  or  less  connected  with  the  parish.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances I  do  not  see  how  Dr.  Carey  could  do  otherwise 
than  he  did,  and  I  should  be  glad  if  Mr.  Trask  might  know 
the  facts  through  you.  Dr.  Carey  is  too  good  a  man  to 
be  misjudged,  and  his  work  has  already  too  many  difficulties 
to  be  weakened  by  the  alienated  sympathy  of  one  who,  as 
I  am  glad  to  know,  has  always  been  among  his  most  gener- 
ous supporters.  Whatever  Mr.  Trask  may  think  of  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  I  am  sure  he  will 
agree  with  me  that  it  is  not  the  Church,  and  that  when  it 
undertakes  to  interfere  with  the  Church's  work,  and  usurp 
the  Church's  functions,  it  does  not  deserve  encouragement, 
but  correction.  My  friendly  relations  to  it  could  not  have 
continued  on  any  other  basis." 


260 

Ever  since  their  days  together  in  the  Seminary,  Henry 
Potter  and  Phillips  Brooks  had  been  warm  friends.  They 
called  each  other  by  their  Christian  names.  It  was  Potter, 
as  we  have  seen,  who  brought  Brooks  to  the  attention  of 
Trinity  Church,  Boston.  He  had  expressed  himself,  in 
a  Convention  Address,  concerning  his  episcopal  brethren 
who  were  trying  to  keep  Brooks  out  of  the  episcopate.  It 
was  natural  and  fitting  that  Brooks  should  ask  Potter  to 
preach  the  sermon  at  his  consecration.  This  Bishop  Potter 
did  in  October,  1891,  and  published  it,  under  the  title 
"Mission  and  Commission"  in  a  volume  of  collected  ser- 
mons, called  "Waymarks"  (1892),  and  later  (1903)  in  a 
volume  of  charges  and  consecration  sermons,  called  "Law 
and  Loyalty." 

Immediately  after  the  consecration  Bishop  Brooks  wrote 
to  Bishop  Potter  to  thank  him.  "I  cannot  let  these  days 
pass  without  thanking  you  for  Wednesday.  I  felt  how 
good  and  kind  it  was  of  you  to  come,  and,  when  you  had 
come  that  you  should  say  such  words  as  you  did  say  gives 
me  great  satisfaction  and  delight,  and  will  always  make  the 
day  shine  in  my  memory. 

"You  will  know  how  peculiarly  near  my  heart  came  those 
last  words  of  brotherly  greeting  and  affection.  Everybody 
felt  their  graciousness  and  beauty.  It  was  mine  to  feel 
also  how  much  of  long-treasured  association,  and  of  a 
kindness  which  has  never  failed,  was  gathered  into  them. 
May  God  bless  you  for  them.  There  could  not  be  a  brighter 
gate  through  which  to  enter  the  New  Land.  I  shall  be  a 
better  Bishop  for  them. 

"This  thing  has  drawn  itself  out  so  long  that  it  is  hard 
to  believe  that  it  is  over.  But  the  change  of  daily  occupa- 
tion reminds  me  constantly  that  I  am  a  Bishop,  and  is 
rapidly  making  the  new  name  familiar.  There  is  no  wild 
exhilaration  about  it,  but  a  quiet  content  that  it  is  all  right, 
and  an  anticipation  of  the  work  as  full  of  interest  and 
satisfaction.  I  shall  be  coming  down  on  you  for  good 
advice  and  the  permission  to  drink  out  of  the  full  river  of 


DIFFERENCES  OF   OPINION  261 

your  long  experience.  This,  before  long,  no  doubt ;  but 
now,  only  my  gratitude  for  all  that  you  have  done  for  me 
this  week,  and  my  assurance  that  you  have  made  the 
change  from  the  old  life  to  the  new  as  happy  as  it  could 
be  made." 

Bishop  Potter  was  able  to  show  this  letter  in  denial  of 
the  rumor  that  Bishop  Brooks  disliked  the  sermon.  Send- 
ing the  letter  some  years  after  (January  17th,  1897)  to  Mr. 
R.  H.  I.  Goddard  of  Providence,  he  said,  "There  was  never 
any  warrant  for  the  statement  you  quoted.  Dr.  Brooks's 
friends  resented  my  sermon  because  it  was  an  argument  for 
the  Historic  Episcopate,  in  which  they  didn't  believe,  and 
which  they  expected  me  to  disparage,  if  not  to  disavow, 
because  they  knew  Dr.  Brooks  did  not  hold  it  very  strongly, 
and  they  thought  I  ought  to  'vindicate'  Dr.  Brooks's  position. 

"But  this  was  great  rubbish,  as  a  little  reflection  should 
have  taught  them.  In  the  first  place,  I  didn't  hold  Dr. 
Brooks's  position.  In  the  second  place,  Dr.  Brooks  knew 
that  I  didn't,  and  insisted  on  my  preaching  at  his  Consecra- 
tion after  I  had,  in  writing,  reminded  him  of  the  fact.  And, 
in  the  third  place,  we  were  consecrating  him  not  because  of 
his  position  but  in  spite  of  it,  and  because  it  was  necessary 
to  show  that,  while  the  Church  permitted  large  liberty  of 
individual  opinion  as  to  her  historic  position,  she  distinctly 
held  and  affirmed  that  position. 

"As  for  Bishop  Brooks  himself,  the  whole  question  was 
largely  indifferent  to  him,  and  his  letter  shows  plainly 
enough,  unless  he  was  a  dishonest  man  (which  nobody,  I 
fancy,  will  care  to  affirm),  that  there  was  no  vestige  of 
warrant  for  the  statement  that  he  felt  aggrieved  at  any- 
thing I  had  said." 

Bishop  Potter  celebrated  New  Year's  Day,  1892,  by 
holding  a  "service  of  occupation"  in  the  chapel  of  the  old 
Leake  and  Watts  Orphan  Asylum,  on  the  site  purchased 
for  the  Cathedral.  This  he  made,  for  the  time,  his  pro- 
cathedral.  In  this  chapel  services  were  regularly  held  there- 
after until  the  crypt  of  the  Cathedral  was  ready. 


262  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Immediately  after  this  he  went  abroad,  and  spent  two 
months,  mainly  in  Rome,  where  he  took  the  services  of  the 
American  Church,  and  preached  the  sermons,  till  Easter. 

Writing  from  that  city  (Churchman,  March  5,  1892)  he 
described  his  visit  on  St.  Paul's  day  to  the  traditional  site 
of  St.  Paul's  martyrdom,  that  great  church  without-the- 
walls  which  bears  his  name.  The  vast  basilica,  he  said, 
was  almost  empty.  A  mitred  prelate,  a  very  old  man, 
was  saying  mass  in  the  presence  of  a  group  of  ecclesiastics 
who  "surrounded  him,  approaching  and  withdrawing, 
fetching  and  carrying,  saluting  and  retiring,  dressing  and 
undressing,  censing  and  rinsing,  covering  and  uncovering." 
"The  peasants  leaned  upon  the  rail,  within  a  few  feet  of 
his  chair,  and  gazed  idly  at  him  and  at  the  spectacle  with 
a  curious  and  good-natured  indifference.  People  went  and 
came,  the  chanted  office  rose  and  fell ;  and  then  they  picked 
up  the  prelate  and  carried  him  away,  and  the  function  was 
concluded."  Nobody  seemed  to  remember  St.  Paul.  The 
Bishop  wondered  what  comment  St.  Paul  would  make,  if 
his  marble  statue  could  become  alive. 

In  May  he  was  in  Paris,  where  he  spent  an  interesting 
day  in  the  Latin  quarter,  among  art  students,  confirming 
ten  of  them  at  St.  Luke's  Church,  and  meeting  many  others 
in  the  evening  at  the  club-rooms  provided  for  them  by  the 
generosity  of  Mrs.  Whitelaw  Reid. 

Later  in  the  same  month,  he  was  in  Oxford,  where  he 
spoke  at  a  meeting  of  the  Christian  Social  Union  on  "The 
Work  of  the  Church  in  America."  Dr.  Sanday,  Mr.  Gore 
and  Mr.  Rashdall  were  among  the  hearers.  The  Oxford 
Review  for  Monday,  May  23d,  1892,  punctuated  its  report 
of  his  speech  with  frequent  notes  of  "applause."  In  strik- 
ing contrast  with  the  homogeneous  character  of  English 
dioceses,  he  was  understood  to  say  that  he  "had  to  ad- 
minister the  sacred  rite  of  confirmation  in  as  many  as  seven 
languages."  He  told  them  how  the  plans  of  the  New  York 
cathedral  provided  for  seven  chapels,  each  devoted  to  the 
use  of  a  different  race  of  people. 


DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION  263 

On  the  24th  of  May,  the  University  of  Oxford  conferred 
upon  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Civil  Law. 

Addressing  the  students  of  the  General  Theological  Sem- 
inary on  his  return  in  June,  he  had  still  in  his  mind  his 
observation  of  the  religion  of  the  Latin  countries.  "It  is 
not,"  he  said,  "by  the  multiplication  of  formularies,  the  re- 
fining of  definition  or  the  austerities  of  discipline,  that  the 
dangers  which  threaten  us  are  to  be  met.  Certainly,  in  a 
branch  of  the  Church  which  has  been  under  the  direct  ob- 
servation of  the  speaker  for  several  months,  the  results  at- 
tained by  such  a  system  suggest  nothing  of  the  purity  and 
simplicity  of  the  primitive  church." 

The  House  of  Bishops  was  assembled  in  October,  1894, 
to  fill  a  vacancy  in  the  missionary  jurisdiction  of  Olympia. 
The  regular  business  of  the  session  being  disposed  of,  the 
bishops  met  "in  council."  This  was  a  procedure  which 
had  no  canonical  standing,  but  for  which  there  was  informal 
precedent.  During  a  period  of  at  least  half  a  century  they 
had  often  met  in  this  manner,  not  as  a  House  of  Bishops, 
but  as  bishops  simply,  for  fraternal  discussion. 

Meeting  thus  in  1894,  the  episcopal  brethren  considered 
the  state  of  the  church.  They  were  gravely  dissatisfied 
with  it.  The  relation  of  the  clergy  to  the  faith  and  order 
of  the  Church  was  still  under  debate.  The  orthodox 
suspected  that  beneath  the  conformity  of  liberal  church- 
men there  was  increasing  unbelief.  At  the  spring  examina- 
tion of  candidates  for  holy  orders  two  young  men  of  the 
senior  class  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  at  Cam- 
bridge were  set  aside  for  further  inquiry.  One  of  their 
examiners  was  not  contented  with  their  replies  to  questions 
touching  the  inspiration  of  Scripture  and  the  virgin  birth 
of  Jesus.  A  further  examination,  indeed,  found  the  men 
qualified  to  be  ordained,  but  there  were  those  who  doubted 
the  wisdom  of  this  decision.  The  difficulty  seemed  to  con- 
firm the  vague  fear  of  conservative  churchmen  that  there 
was  a  concerted  movement  to  forsake  the  faith.  This 
was  the  situation  when  the  Presiding  Bishop,  Dr.  Williams 


264  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

of  Connecticut,  asked  the  brethren  to  wait  a  bit  after  the 
House  adjourned  and  see  what  could  be  done.  Sitting 
thus  "in  council/'  the  bishops  appointed  a  committee  to 
prepare  a  Pastoral  Letter. 

The  committee  consisted  of  Dr.  Williams,  who  was  its 
Chairman,  Dr.  Doane  of  Albany,  Dr.  Huntington  of  Central 
New  York,  Dr.  McLaren  of  Chicago,  Dr.  Seymour  of 
Springfield,  and  Dr.  Potter.  Bishop  Williams  wrote  the 
letter. 

"We  have  met  in  council/'  said  the  Pastoral,  "to  consider 
our  duty  in  view  of  certain  novelties  of  opinion  and  ex- 
pression which  have  seemed  to  us  to  be  subversive  of  the 
fundamental  verities  of  Christ's  religion."  The  ancient 
and  true  expression  and  opinion,  the  six  bishops  then  pro- 
ceeded to  set  forth,  first  as  regards  the  Incarnation,  then 
as  regards  the  doctrine  of  inspiration.  Concerning  in- 
spiration, they  opened  the  door  to  all  the  honest  critics ; 
they  found  warrant  in  the  Bible  itself  for  the  theory  of  pro- 
gressive revelation;  and,  while  deprecating  "irreverent 
rashness"  and  "presumptuous  superciliousness,"  they  en- 
couraged fearless  study.  But  the  Incarnation  they  as- 
sociated with  the  ideas  of  the  supernatural  birth  and  the 
physical  resurrection  in  such  a  wray  as  to  suggest  that  that 
essential  doctrine  stands  or  falls  with  these  details.  And, 
unfortunately  for  their  excellent  purpose,  they  introduced 
into  the  discussion  the  proposition  that  "fixedness  of  in- 
terpretation is  of  the  essence  of  the  creeds." 

This  proposition  not  only  elevated  the  creeds  to  the  level 
of  the  gospels,  but  it  bound  the  growing  church  to  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  clergy  of  Rome  and  of  Alexandria  in  the 
fourth  century.  All  that  we  have  to  do  about  the  creeds 
is  to  take  notes  of  the  sermons  of  Athanasius,  and  report 
them  to  our  congregations.  The  dogmatic  decisions  of 
the;  Council  of  Nicaia  made  further  thought  on  these  matters 
not  only  unnecessary,  but  impertinent  ;  for,  if  we  think,  we 
may  find  ourselves  in  disagreement  with  the  interpretations 
given  by  those  brethren.  The  Creeds,  said  the  Pastoral, 


DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION  265 

are  not  only  "statements  of  facts,"  but  "dogmatic  truths 
founded  upon  and  deduced  from  these  facts,  and  once  for 
all  determined  upon  by  the  operation  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
upon  the  mind  of  the  Church." 

The  mind  of  the  Church,  however,  in  the  year  of  grace 
1894,  was  inclined  to  resent  this  arbitrary  ascription  of 
infallibility  to  the  brethren  of  the  year  of  grace  325.  There 
was  an  immediate  storm  of  protest.  Not  only  was  the  un- 
happy phrase  subjected  to  frank  criticism,  but  the  Pastoral 
as  a  whole  was  objected  to  as  a  document  uncalled  for  and 
uncanonical.  The  clergy  are  bound  by  canon  to  read  to 
their  people  the  letter  which  the  House  of  Bishops  once  in 
three  years  sends  forth.  This,  however,  they  do  with  more 
or  less  reluctance,  finding  some  of  these  epistles  long  and 
uninteresting.  That  a  number  of  bishops,  under  the  in- 
formal and  unrecognized  conditions  of  a  "council,"  may 
thus  address  the  Church  is  quite  another  matter,  and  one 
to  which  no  presbyter  is  bound  to  pay  attention.  And 
the  offence  is  aggravated  when  any  six  bishops,  no  matter 
who  they  are,  presume  to  issue  over  their  own  names  a 
document  which  they  call  a  Pastoral.  It  has  only  the 
value  which  would  belong  to  a  statement  signed  by  six 
eminent  presbyters.  The  clergy  have  always  resented  the 
endeavor  of  the  bishops  to  give  them  instruction ;  in  this 
case  they  resented  not  only  the  instruction  but  the  manner 
in  which  it  was  given,  and  the  episcopal  assumption  that  it 
was  needed. 

Under  these  circumstances,  Bishop  Potter  as  one  of  the 
six  signers,  wrote  a  characteristic  open  letter. 

"The  Tribune,"  he  said,  addressing  the  editor  of  that 
newspaper,  "has  lately  referred  editorially  to  the  Pastoral 
Letter  of  the  House  of  Bishops  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in 
terms  which  indicate  that  those  for  whom  it  undertakes  to 
speak  are  laboring  under  very  considerable  misapprehension. 

"It  may  be  well  to  say  that  the  Pastoral,  of  which,  I  am 
permitted  to  say,  the  presiding  bishop,  and  not  any  other, 
was  the  author,  was  aimed  at  no  school,  nor  undertook  to 


266  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

subject  to  criticism  or  suspicion  any  individual  party  or 
institution.  If  there  be  to-day  a  school,  party,  or  individ- 
uals that  deny  the  Church's  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  I, 
for  one,  do  not  know  them,  or  the  teaching  which  could 
justly  subject  them  to  such  an  imputation.  But  there 
are  a  good  many  people  who  from  various  causes  (among 
which  the  habit  of  mis-statement,  exaggeration  or  innuendo, 
to  which  individuals,  newspapers,  and,  it  must  be  added, 
so-called  religious  or  ecclesiastical  journals  are  sometimes 
addicted,  must  be  reckoned  in)  have  come  to  be  more  or 
less  perturbed  or  alarmed  as  to  what  they  have  been  told 
is  a  distinct  tendency  or  drift  in  the  Church  itself.  For 
the  relief  and  reassurance  of  these,  widely  scattered  as  they 
are  and  imperfectly  informed,  it  was  thought  well  to  re- 
state the  position  of  the  Church,  as  held  and  taught  from 
the  beginning.  As  your  editorial  points  out,  nothing  more 
or  other  than  this  has  been  done  by  the  Pastoral  Letter, 
unless  in  an  occasional  phrase,  which  is  made  to  bear  some 
other  meaning  than  that  which  may  be  rightly  put  upon  it. 
"As  the  Tribune  further  points  out,  the  Pastoral  Letter 
has  undoubtedly  no  conciliar  authority,  and  may  be  said 
if  anybody  choses  to  say  so,  to  have  little  more  value  than 
is  expressed  in  the  more  or  less  close  consensus  of  opinion 
of  some  half-dozen  individuals.  Its  value,  if  it  has  any, 
consists  simply  in  its  reaffirming  things  that  the  Church, 
in  her  formularies,  and  Holy  Scriptures  in  their  plain  and 
obvious  sense,  teach  and  affirm.  There  are  phrases  in  it 
which,  I  am  quite  free  to  say,  I  should  have  been  glad  to 
change  into  other  and  less  archaic  forms.  But  even  in 
the  case  of  the  most  obnoxious  of  these  as  criticised  in  your 
columns,  such  as,  e.g.,  that  ' fixedness  of  interpretation  is 
of  the  essence  of  the  creeds/  this  plainly  cannot  be  in- 
tended to  carry  more  than  the  simple  statement  that  the 
Church,  in  the  case,  e.g.,  of  the  virgin  birth  of  our  Lord, 
does  not  any  longer  regard  that  question  as  a  debatable 
one  in  her  pulpits  and  by  her  authorized  teachers.  It 
certainly  does  not  mean  that  if  at  any  time  in  the  future 


DIFFERENCES    OF    OPINION  267 

the  whole  basis  of  fact  on  which  that  article  of  the  Creed 
rests  can  be  shown  to  be  false  or  fictitious,  the  Church  is 
to  go  on  indefinitely  affirming  it.  But  it  ought  to  be  clear 
enough,  even  to  the  most  interrogative  mind,  that  a  divine 
society  which  claims  to  rest  upon  'most  certain  facts,'  can- 
not consent  that  any  one  who  is  clothed  with  authority  to 
teach  and  bear  witness  to  these  facts  shall  surrender,  or 
impugn  or  disparage  them  until  the  body  that  has  com- 
missioned him  has  authorized  him  to  do  so.  His  office 
and  authority,  first,  last,  and  all  the  time,  are  representa- 
tive, and  when  the  time  comes  that  he  finds  himself  requir- 
ing a  larger  liberty  than  his  official  obligations  concede  to 
him,  common  honesty  would  seem  to  require  that  he  should 
seek  it  outside,  not  inside,  of  a  fellowship  to  which  his  vows 
and  promises,  in  the  matter  of  what  he  shall  teach  and  hold, 
are  both  definite  and  explicit. 

"There  is  a  very  large  constituency  that  feels  these  things, 
and  feels  them  strongly.  They  may  be  simple  folk,  too 
easily  alarmed,  too  little  informed.  No  matter ;  a  true 
wisdom  will  seek  to  teach  and  reassure  them ;  and  if  the 
letters  which  have  come  to  me  from  Texas  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and  from  Dakota  to  the  sea,  —  in  every  case  but 
one  from  lay  people,  and  asking  for  copies  of  the  Pastoral 
to  circulate  —  are  any  evidence  of  what  was  widely  desired, 
the  Pastoral  Letter  has  not  been  written  in  vain.  It  has 
indeed  affirmed  the  Church's  doctrine,  but  it  has  no  less, 
I  may  add,  guarded  the  scholar's  liberty,  and,  as  more 
than  one  friend  of  a  fearless,  candid  and  unfaltering  scrutiny 
of  all  that  claims  to  be  Holy  Scripture  has  said  to  me,  it 
has  defined  the  Church's  freedom  no  less  than  its  faith." 

It  is  not  likely  that  this  explanation  was  altogether  satis- 
factory to  the  editorial  mind,  but  it  cleared  up  one  or  two 
points.  It  disclaimed  for  the  Letter  any  "conciliar  author- 
ity"; it  took  a  little  of  the  "fixedness"  out  of  the  objec- 
tionable formula  ;  and  it  made  the  document  the  composi- 
tion of  one  author,  more  or  less  supported  by  five  assenting 
brethren.  An  amused  observer  discovered  a  prophecy  of 


268  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  Pastoral  of  the  Six  Bishops  in  Ezekiel  9  : 2.  "Behold, 
six  men  came  from  the  way  of  the  higher  gate,  which  lieth 
toward  the  north,  and  every  man  a  slaughter  weapon  in 
his  hand  ;  and  one  man  among  them  was  clothed  with  linen, 
with  a  writer's  ink-horn  by  his  side."  The  "higher  gate" 
indicated  their  episcopal  position;  the  "north,"  the  loca- 
tion of  most  of  their  dioceses ;  the  man  in  linen  with  the 
ink-horn  was  clearly  the  Presiding  Bishop  who  wrote  the 
Letter !  Bishop  Potter's  explanation,  however,  declared 
that  the  six  men  were  men  of  peace,  and  that  there  was  not 
a  "slaughter  weapon"  in  the  company. 

Even  so,  the  problem  was  not  solved  —  the  everlasting 
problem  of  right  adjustment  between  the  institution  on 
the  one  side  and  the  individual  on  the  other,  between 
precedent  and  progress,  law  and  liberty,  faith  and  freedom, 
between  the  priest  and  the  prophet.  The  priest  solves  it, 
because  he  is  a  priest :  he  is  for  authority,  and  instinctively 
maintains  that  the  free  scholar  is  a  heretic.  The  prophet 
solves  it,  because  he  is  a  prophet :  he  is  for  liberty,  and  is 
against  things  as  they  are.  The  priest  is  at  home  among 
Romanists ;  the  prophet,  among  Protestants.  But  the 
Episcopal  Church  includes  the  essential  truths  for  which 
each  of  these  associations  stands.  It  is,  as  Bishop  Potter 
always  maintained,  a  comprehensive  Church.  This  com- 
prehension includes  contradictions,  each  of  which  is  right  — • 
and  wrong. 

No  man  ever  represented  the  Episcopal  Church  better 
than  Bishop  Potter,  for  in  him  this  spirit  of  comprehension 
was  temperamental.  He  was  an  institutionalist  and  an 
individualist  at  the  same  time,  —  like  most  reasonable 
people.  He  desired  to  have  the  church's  doctrine  affirmed  ; 
and  he  desired  also  to  have  the  scholar's  liberty  guarded. 
His  proposition,  that  the  scholar  who  finds  the  doctrine 
defective  shall  keep  silence  until  the  body  that  has  com- 
missioned him  shall  authorize  him  to  speak,  is  like  the  logic 
of  "Alice  in  Wonderland."  How  shall  that  conservative 
body  ever  know  enough  so  to  authorize  him,  until  by  much 


DIFFERENCES   OF    OPINION  269 

speaking  he  teaches  it  ?  But  the  truth  is  that  the  situation 
laughs  at  logic,  and  is  actually  solved  not  by  the  definitions 
of  theologians  or  ecclesiastics,  broad  or  narrow,  but  by  the 
cautious  progress  of  men  who  are  both  progressive  and  con- 
servative, like  Henry  Potter. 

Nobody  complained  of  any  ambiguous  two-sidedness  on 
Bishop  Potter's  part  in  the  matter  of  a  declaration  which 
he  made  in  1895,  in  the  course  of  a  campaign  for  better 
government  in  New  York. 

The  administration  of  the  mayor  had  disappointed  his 
original  supporters.  Elected  by  the  votes  of  various  or- 
ganizations, he  had  shown  his  gratitude  by  distributing 
the  city  offices  among  them,  thus  filling  the  places  with 
men  whose  chief  qualification  was  their  political  activity. 
Therefore  the  Good  Government  Clubs  took  independent 
action.  Disgusted  with  a  "Fusion  ticket,"  the  result  of 
a  compromise  made  by  a  number  of  respectable  citizens 
with  the  Republican  "machine,"  they  put  in  the  field  a 
non-partisan  ticket  of  their  own.  In  support  of  this  ticket 
Bishop  Potter  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  R.  Fulton  Cutting, 
chairman  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Good  Govern- 
ment Clubs. 

"In  response,"  he  said,  "to  your  inquiry  as  to  my  atti- 
tude toward  the  present  municipal  situation,  I  am  very 
glad  to  assure  you  that  it  is  one  in  hearty  sympathy  with 
your  own.  As  a  member  myself  of  a  Good  Government 
Club,  and  as  in  complete  accord  with  that  for  which  it 
stands,  I  am  profoundly  thankful  that  there  are  some  of 
the  same  fellowship  who  have  been  enabled  to  '  see  straight ' 
in  the  present  emergency,  and  have  stood  out  against  a 
most  mortifying  surrender  of  the  reform  movement.  A 
base  alliance  is  not  justifiable,  in  my  judgment,  even  for 
the  accomplishment  of  a  good  end.  It  is  not  expedient, 
it  is  not  sound  political  wisdom,  to  compromise  principle, 
even  for  the  sake  of  electing  good  men  or  keeping  bad  men 
out  of  office.  Political  sagacity  and  a  regard  for  what  is 
right  alike  demand  that  the  clubs  should  adhere  to  their 


270  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

fundamental  principle  of  non-partisanship  in  city  govern- 
ment. 

"I  can  quite  appreciate  the  temptation  to  surrender  a 
position  of  independence,  which  for  the  moment  seems 
only  likely  to  invite  defeat,  for  an  equivocal  alliance  which 
promises  victory,  and  I  can  no  less  appreciate  the  reluctance 
to  appear  obstinate  or  impractical,  which  has  doubtless  led 
many  good  men  into  a  partnership  which  promises  a  victory 
over  the  common  foe.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  such  a  vic- 
tory will  cost  the  very  position  which  it  proposes  to  defend. 
I  believe  that  a  victory  won  by  an  alliance  with  corrupt 
men  surrenders  the  very  vantage  ground  from  which  we 
can  alone  hope  successfully  to  fight  them. 

"We  hear  much  of  'practical  politics.'  I  believe  that 
the  fusion  business  is  bad  ' practical  politics.'  No  sophistry 
can  confuse,  in  the  minds  of  the  masses  of  the  people,  the 
fact  that  in  order  to  defeat  a  corrupt  political  organization 
a  combination  has  been  made  with  men  who  represent 
precisely  the  same  methods,  to  be  used  for  the  same  ends. 

"The  plain  people,  who  form  the  great  body  of  our  fellow- 
citizens,  and  who  read  and  think  a  great  deal  more  about 
this  matter  than  many  of  us  imagine,  are  in  no  confusion 
of  mind  on  this  subject.  They  understand  what  govern- 
ment by  bosses,  or  by  alliance  with  bosses,  means  ;  and  they 
are  waiting  for  men  with  courage  and  steadfastness  sufficient 
to  deliver  them  from  it.  I  believe  that  the  great  mass  of 
our  citizens,  who  have  no  personal  ends  to  serve  in  an 
election,  are  ready  to  stand  by  any  group  of  men,  however 
small,  who  will  not  consent  to  a  base  alliance  even  to  attain 
a  good  end.  Whatever  the  present  may  have  in  store  for 
them,  the  future  is  theirs.  Meantime,  I  am  with  them 
heart  and  soul." 

The  Committee  of  Fifty,  in  charge  of  the  fusion  with  the 
professional  politicians,  wrote  immediately  in  protest. 

"We  beg  to  say  that  you  are  wholly  misinformed  as  to 
the  facts  stated  or  assumed  in  your  letter  to  Mr.  H.  Fulton 
Cutting,  which  was  published  in  this  morning's  news- 


DIFFERENCES   OF   OPINION  271 

papers.  .  .  .  We  regret  that  you  have  been  absent  from 
the  city  during  the  campaign  and  that  you  should  have 
taken  your  information  regarding  it  from  a  lie  of  Tammany 
without  inquiry  of  this  Committee  which  includes  many 
of  your  close  personal  friends  and  supporters." 

But  the  confederated  clubs  printed  the  letter  in  a  poster 
which  they  set  in  public  places  all  over  the  city. 

The  two  tickets,  fusion  and  non-partisan,  went  down  in 
defeat  together,  and  Tammany  came  back ;  but  the  move- 
ment thus  begun  and  endorsed  continued.  Bishop  Potter, 
after  the  election,  wrote  to  Dr.  Rainsford  :  "The  policy 
of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  the  shilly-shallying 
policy  of  public-spirited  citizens,  like  -  — ,  who  first  fumbled 
with  and  then  went  back  on  the  proposition  to  have  an  elec- 
tion which  disowned  the  dictation  of,  or  the  dickering  with, 
bosses,  shut  up  30,000  voters  in  their  houses,  last  election- 
day,  and  cost  us  the  opportunity  to  win  a  great  moral 
victory  on  absolutely  independent  lines ;  and  it  may  do 
so  again ;  but  it  will  not  affect  the  final  result." 

Preparations  to  fulfil  this  prophecy  were  at  once  begun. 
In  1896,  a  committee  of  the  City  Club  reported  in  favor  of 
establishing  a  city  party,  independent  of  national  parties 
and  national  questions.  This  committee  conferred  with  the 
Good  Government  Clubs,  and  the  Citizens  Union  was  es- 
tablished. In  1901,  the  Citizens  Union  elected  Mr.  Seth 
Low  Mayor  of  New  York. 

Bishop  Potter's  mind  in  the  whole  matter  was  spoken 
again  in  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  World. 

"Just  now  I  should  say  that  the  highest  duty  of  the 
citizen  in  relation  to  municipal  progress  and  reform  is  to 
get  rid  of  the  grotesque  notion  that  municipal  reform  and 
progress  mean  anything  else  than  clean  and  honest  service 
to  the  city  by  clean  and  honest  officials. 

"The  effort  to  connect  the  administration  of  the  city 
with  questions  of  national  politics  is  as  irrational  as  to  talk 
of  democratic  beer  and  republican  beef.  The  politics  of 
the  man  of  whom  you  and  I  buy  food  and  clothing  has  no 


272  HENRY   CODMAN    POTTER 

more  to  do  with  their  quality  than  the  color  of  his  hair  or 
eyes  ;  and  the  character  of  the  service  rendered  by  a  mayor, 
a  controller,  or  a  street-sweeper  depends  simply  and  solely 
upon  the  question  whether  they  know  their  business  and 
mean  to  do  their  work  honestly  and  faithfully.  Practical 
politicians,  as  a  class,  do  not  and  do  not  mean  to  do  either. 
They  are  working  for  the  machine,  taking  care  of  their 
friends,  and  enriching  themselves.  If  men  who  work  for 
their  own  living  and  believe  that  other  men,  whether  in 
high  place  or  low  place,  ought  to  do  the  same,  and  not  use 
place  for  political  jobs,  have  not  had  enough  of  the  corrup- 
tion and  thieving  of  partisan  government,  I  am  still  confident 
that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  they  will  end  them 
with  a  strong  hand." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

A   SOJOURN   IN   STANTON   STREET 
1895 

MEANWHILE,  the  Cathedral  Idea  had  begun  to  take 
shape.  The  time  was  approaching  when  it  would  be 
possible  to  lay  the  cornerstone. 

The  Bishop  had  kept  the  matter,  publicly  and  privately, 
in  the  general  mind,  but  he  had  not  mentioned  it  in  his 
Convention  Addresses.  In  October,  1892,  he  broke  this 
silence. 

"During  the  past  nine  years,"  he  said,  "I  have  not  in 
any  single  instance,  I  believe,  referred  to  the  matter  of  the 
Cathedral.  It  will  be  enough  to  say  that  for  four  of  these 
years,  during  the  life  of  my  venerated  predecessor,  I  did 
not  feel  myself  at  liberty,  as  an  assistant-bishop,  to  initiate 
any  original  action  concerning  a  matter  in  regard  to  which 
he  had  already  addressed  you.  Since  then,  whatever  has 
been  done  has  been  sufficiently  made  known  to  you  in  other 
ways  than  this,  and  I  have  delayed  reference  to  the  matter 
until  now  in  order  that  it  might  be  sufficiently  advanced  to 
warrant  my  commending  it  to  your  attention  and  interest 
with  a  reasonable  prospect  of  its  efficient  progress.  That 
point,  I  am  thankful  to  say,  has  now  been  well-nigh  reached. 
For  the  very  costly,  but  very  noble  site,  which  has,  I  am 
told,  doubled  in  value  since  we  acquired  it,  satisfactory 
provision  has  been  so  far  advanced  that  a  cordial  and 
united  effort  ought  soon  to  complete  it.  We  shall  then 
be  in  a  position  to  lay  the  cornerstone." 

He  hoped  that  the  date  might  be  St.  John  the  Evangelist's 
Day.  He  spoke  of  the  trustees'  selection  of  two  gentlemen 
T  273 


274  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

(Messrs.  Heins  and  La  Farge),  "whose  services  will  be 
given  to  preparing  suitable  designs  for  at  least  a  part  of 
the  structure,  so  that  a  beginning  may  be  made,  and  some 
such  portion  of  the  building  as  will  suffice  for  the  main- 
tenance of  public  worship  will  be  provided." 

Accordingly,  on  the  Feast  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist, 
December  27th,  1892,  Bishop  Potter  laid  the  cornerstone 
of  the  Cathedral.  A  temporary  wooden  structure,  in 
cruciform  shape,  with  a  canvas  roof,  seated  the  thousand 
persons  to  whom  cards  of  admission  nad  been  sent.  Flags 
of  the  United  States  and  of  the  Cathedral  floated  from  the 
gables.  The  marshal  with  his  silver  mace  led  the  procession, 
in  which  marched  the  Church  Choral  Society,  the  seminarians 
in  their  gowns,  the  trustees  of  the  Cathedral  with  purple 
sashes,  and  the  clergy  with  colored  stoles  and  hoods.  The 
service  was  prepared  for  the  occasion  by  Dr.  Huntington ; 
verses  from  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine  were 
recited  by  Dr.  Dix ;  the  lesson  was  read  by  the  Hon.  Mel- 
ville W.  Fuller,  Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States.  Bishop 
Doane  who  made  the  address  began  by  speaking  toward  the 
chancel.  Bishop  Potter  interrupted  him  and  asked  him  to 
turn  toward  the  transepts,  saying,  "The  greater  public  is 
there."  "No,"  answered  Bishop  Doane,  "not  while  you  are 
on  this  side !" 

Thus  with  solemnity  and  informality  the  cornerstone 
was  set  in  place.  "0  God,"  they  prayed,  "who  buildest 
for  thy  Majesty  an  eternal  habitation  out  of  living  and 
elect  stones  ;  assist  thy  suppliant  people,  that  as  thy  Church 
increaseth  in  outward  strength,  it  may  also  be  enlarged  by 
spiritual  increase;  through  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord." 

It  was  to  the  Cathedral  that  the  Bishop's  mind  im- 
mediately turned  when  in  commemoration  of  the  tenth 
anniversary  of  his  consecration  his  clergy  sent  him  a  gift 
of  money. 

On  Christmas  Day  of  1S03,  Bishop  Potter  received  in 
Florence  a  cablegram  which  said,  "Clergy  send  Christmas 
greeting ;  five  hundred  dollars  to  follow ;  please  procure 


A   SOJOURN   IN   STANTON   STREET  275 

remembrancer  of  tenth  anniversary."  To  this  he  replied 
from  London  to  the  Rev.  H.  L.  Myrick :  "Your  cablegram 
found  me  at  Florence,  whither  I  had  gone  to  keep  the  feast 
with  such  of  my  kinsfolk  as  were  within  reach.  I  wish  I 
had  words  to  tell  you  how  greatly  it  moved  me. 

"When,  last  October,  some  of  my  brethren  so  kindly 
proposed  through  you  to  mark  the  tenth  anniversary  of 
my  consecration  by  presenting  me  with  a  pastoral  staff, 
it  was  not  easy  for  me  to  discourage  their  loyal  and  affec- 
tionate purpose,  nor  to  write  you  as  I  did.  For,  however 
keenly  I  might  feel  that  such  service  as  I  had  rendered 
the  diocese  was  too  brief  and  too  insignificant  for  such  a 
token  of  recognition,  it  was  an  unwilling,  as  it  seemed  an 
ungracious,  task  to  refuse  a  personal  expression  of  regard 
which  could  not  but  be  very  dear  to  me. 

"That  you,  and  those  whom  you  represent,  have  per- 
severed in  your  kind  purpose,  giving  it,  moreover,  a  form 
which  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  decline  your  gift,  — 
this,  I  can  only  say,  was  like  you  and  them.  And  yet,  I 
have  not  done  what  your  cablegram  asked  me  to  do,  and 
I  will  tell  you  why.  The  request  was  that  with  the  very 
handsome  sum  which  you  had  cabled  to  me,  I  should  while 
abroad  purchase  something  which,  as  a  gift  from  the  clergy, 
would  be  a  memorial  of  the  anniversary  to  which  your  de- 
spatch referred.  I  could  very  easily  have  done  that ;  and 
I  thought  at  first,  and  naturally,  of  a  set  of  books  which 
would  ultimately  become  the  property  of  the  diocesan 
library.  But  another  use  of  the  sum  which  the  brethren 
have  sent  to  me  has  occurred  to  me,  and  in  this  I  cannot 
but  hope  that  you  and  they  will  concur.  When  we  build 
the  choir  of  the  cathedral  I  should  greatly  like  to  think  that 
the  bishop's  stall  in  it  was  the  gift  of  my  brethren.  I  hope 
we  shall  be  content  with  a  stall  for  the  bishop's  seat,  and 
that  thereby  the  true  conception  of  the  office,  as  at  any 
rate  the  primitive  Church  held  it,  as  primus  inter  pares, 
may  be  exalted,  rather  than  the  bishop  upon  a  throne. 
But  still  the  Bishop's  seat,  whether  it  be  stall  or  throne, 


276  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

stands  for  his  office,  and  for  that  pastoral  authority  which 
ex  Cathedra  goes  with  it ;  and  I  should  like  to  be  able  to 
think  that  my  brethren  had  found  my  exercise  of  that 
office  so  little  harsh  or  inequitable  that  they  were  willing 
themselves  in  giving  it  to  accept  the  bishop's  seat  as  a  symbol 
of  the  temper  in  which,  on  the  whole,  for  these  last  ten 

years,  it  has  been  filled.  ' is  a  brute,'  wrote  a  Rugby 

schoolboy,  a  generation  ago,  referring  to  a  headmaster  who 
afterward  filled  a  bishop's  stall,  'but  he  is  a  just  brute'; 
and  the  bishop  whose  wise  rule  will  long  be  remembered  in 
England,  is  said  to  have  prized  his  clergy's  often  quotation 
of  the  lad's  extravagant  but  discerning  phrase  as  the  best 
compliment  they  could  pay  him.  And  he  was  right.  For 
though  personal  limitations  in  other  directions  may  prevent 
a  bishop's  being  many  things  that  his  clergy  might  wish 
him  to  be,  he  can,  at  least,  administer  his  office  in  a  spirit 
of  loving  and  manly  fairness ;  and  if,  in  striving  to  do  so, 
he  is  so  fortunate  as  to  win  the  love  and  confidence  of  his 
clergy  he  has,  I  think,  his  best  earthly  reward. 

"And  so,  to  end  this  too  long  letter,  I  want,  if  I  may, 
to  appropriate  the  gift  of  the  clergy  in  this  way.  May  I 
ask  you  to  ascertain  if  this  will  be  entirely  agreeable  to 
them,  and  may  I  beg  you,  my  dear  Myrick,  to  convey  to 
them,  and  to  accept  for  yourself,  the  assurance  of  my  grate- 
ful and  loving  regard." 

The  Bishop  was  greatly  concerned  about  the  spiritual 
value  of  the  Cathedral.  He  desired,  indeed,  a  noble  church 
whose  grandeur  should  be  a  symbol  of  the  place  of  religion 
in  the  life  of  the  city.  He  had  in  mind  an  outstanding, 
conspicuous  structure,  high  and  stately  as  the  ancient 
^lirines  of  England  and  the  Continent,  which  no  office 
building  should  overtop.  Even  so,  he  saw  in  his  vision 
the  vast  spaces  open  to  all  people,  free  and  hospitable,  for 
public  services  and  for  private  prayers.  But  especially 
lie  had  in  his  ideal  a  church  which  should  be  related  to 
the  whole  city  as  Grace  Church,  in  his  rectorship,  had  been 
related  to  the  community.  It  should  be  a  place  of  inspiration 


A   SOJOURN   IN   STANTON   STREET  277 

out  of  which  men  and  women  would  go  to  undertake  and 
maintain  great  social  purposes.  It  should  be  a  ministering 
Cathedral. 

Writing  to  Richard  Watson  Gilder  in  answer  to  a  re- 
quest to  identify  himself  with  the  work  of  the  New  York 
Kindergarten  Association,  he  spoke  of  the  deep  impression 
made  upon  him  by  a  report  made  by  one  of  the  workers. 

"On  going  to  the  Normal  College/'  he  said,  "to  deliver 
an  address  to  the  Graduates'  Association,  I  heard  on  Satur- 
day afternoon  an  address  from  a  lady  which  was  so  much 
better  than  my  own  that  I  shall  remember  it  as  long  as  I 
live.  To  you,  who  have  been  forced  to  listen  to  a  great 
many  addresses  of  mine,  this  will  be  no  surprise ;  but  even 
with  your  critical  standards  of  excellence  and  interest  I 
believe  it  would  have  touched  and  moved  your  callous 
editorial  heart  as  profoundly  as  it  did  mine.  Such  a  story 
of  the  persuasive,  quickening  and  refining  efficacy  of  kin- 
dergarten work  in  the  homes  and  lives  of  little  children 
denied  so  much  by  the  stern  conditions  of  a  wage-earner's 
life  in  New  York,  I  never  listened  to  before.  As  I  write, 
the  pathos  and  power  of  it  all  comes  back  to  me  with  the 
spell  of  a  new  inspiration.  All  kindergartners  cannot  give 
to  their  work  such  exceptional  gifts,  but  they  can  give 
themselves ;  and  the  value  of  this  form  of  endeavor, 
as  I  see  it,  is  that  it  affords  so  large  an  opportunity  for 
that." 

He  was  deeply  interested  in  the  work  of  the  East  Side 
House.  This  social  settlement,  of  which  Mr.  Everett  P. 
Wheeler  was  the  president,  had  been  established  in  1891, 
in  East  Seventy-sixth  Street,  on  the  bank  of  the  river. 
There  it  offered  to  the  neighborhood  a  playground  and  a 
bathing  basin,  a  kindergarten  and  a  public  library,  a  day 
nursery  and  a  cooperative  housekeeping  society,  and  took 
an  active  interest  in  both  the  sanitary  and  the  political 
progress  of  the  neighborhood.  Bishop  Potter  gave  the 
East  Side  House  his  aid  and  counsel  and  unfailing  interest. 
"That  rare  and  admirable  work,"  he  called  it. 


278  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

It  was  accordingly  his  deep  desire  that  the  Cathedral 
should  be  engaged  in  this  supreme  service  of  social  better- 
ment. And  hardly  had  the  cornerstone  been  laid  when 
an  opportunity  was  opened. 

In  the  spring  of  1893,  the  Brotherhood  of  St.  Andrew 
proposed  to  the  trustees  of  the  Cathedral  that  the  Stanton 
Street  Mission  be  taken  over,  and  made  a  field  for  cathedral 
activity.  The  Bishop  commented  upon  the  matter  in  his 
Diocesan  Address  in  September. 

"The  plan,"  he  said,  "aims  at  the  creation  of  a  cathedral 
branch  of  the  Brotherhood  of  St.  Andrew,  thus  to  tie  to- 
gether the  Cathedral,  as  an  institution  and  as  a  spiritual 
centre,  and  the  most  needy  portions  of  our  city-missions 
work.  It  is  a  most  Christlike  plan  and  purpose,  and  I  pray 
God  and  the  people  of  this  Diocese  to  give  us  the  means  to 
carry  it  out.  It  will  need  some  money,  though  relatively 
not  much ;  but  it  will  most  need  men  and  women  who  will 
go  down  and  live,  in  turn,  for  a  while,  in  the  Mission  House, 
and  work  with  and  among  the  people  whom  they  are  trying 
to  serve.  In  that  one  feature  I  confess  I  feel  a  supreme 
interest.  If  I  and  my  brethren  of  the  clergy  would  go  in 
turn,  for  a  month  or  two  at  a  time,  with  a  few  faithful 
laity,  and  live  sparely  and  work  faithfully  and  pray  earnestly 
with  and  among  our  brethren  who  are  now  so  far  —  alas, 
how  far  !  —  from  us,  I  do  not  say  that  we  should  revolution- 
ize New  York ;  I  do  not  say  that  we  should  repeat  the 
scenes  of  Pentecostal  days ;  but  I  do  say  that  we  should 
better  imitate  Him  of  whom  the  apostle  said,  as  if  in 
recognition  of  this  supreme  human  distinction,  'the  Son  of 
God,  who  loved  me  and  gave  himself  for  me';  and  I  be- 
lieve that  we  should  learn  how  to  understand  and  to  get 
near  to  those  whom  we  desired  to  serve,  as  we  can  never 
do  in  any  other  way.  'What  a  new  face  it  would  put  upon 
this  old  world  of  ours/  says  Emerson,  'if  men  would  only 
consent  to  exchange  the  religion  of  enmity  for  the  religion 
of  amity.'  What  are  these  words  but  the  dry  Xcw  England 
evaporation  of  another's  words, -- Teacher,  Saviour, 


A    SOJOURN   IN    STANTON   STREET  279 

eternal  King  of  men :  '  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all 
men  unto  me ! '  The  cross  as  the  symbol  of  brotherly  love, 
the  cross  in  the  life  as  the  expression  of  brotherly  love  — 
the  life  given  for  other  needier  lives  —  this  is  the  philosophy 
that  is  to  solve  our  social  problems ;  and,  in  the  final  issue 
of  them  all,  there  is  no  place  for  any  other.  And  so, 
brethren,  we  see  our  calling  as  a  Church  and  as  citizens 
alike.  May  God  make  us  sufficient  for  it." 

In  the  spring  of  1894,  the  Bishop  called  a  meeting  in  the 
See  House  to  enlist  the  interest  of  Church  people  in  this 
matter. 

The  Church  of  the  Epiphany,  in  Stanton  street,  was  or- 
ganized in  1833,  and  was  the  first  free  church  in  the  city. 
Dr.  Lot  Jones  was  the  rector  for  over  thirty  years.  After 
his  death  the  parish  was  much  depleted  by  changes  in  the 
population  of  the  neighborhood,  until  in  1874  the  few  re- 
maining members  made  an  exchange  of  property  with  the 
Church  of  the  Reformation  on  East  Fiftieth  street.  The 
new  owners  were  no  more  successful  than  the  old,  and  the 
parish  became  for  a  time  a  mission  of  St.  George's.  Under 
this  management  the  work  was  revived,  the  congregations 
and  organizations  increased,  and  a  brick  church  was  built. 
St.  George's,  however,  after  some  years,  desired  to  be  free 
of  this  responsibility.  There  was  a  possibility  that  the 
mission  might  cease  to  exist.  It  was  in  view  of  this  possi- 
bility that  the  Brotherhood  of  St.  Andrew  had  sought  to 
ally  the  Mission  with  the  Cathedral ;  and  it  was  in  further- 
ance of  this  plan  that  the  Bishop  assembled  a  company  of 
interested  Church  people. 

"I  cannot,"  he  said,  "contemplate  such  a  contingency 
[as  the  closing  of  the  church]  without  pain  and  dismay,  for 
those  who  are  being  ministered  to  by  the  Stanton  Street 
Mission  are  preeminently  those  whose  bare  and  burdened 
lives  need  the  light  and  cheer,  and,  above  all,  the  immortal 
courage  and  hope  which  the  Church  of  God,  and  those  who 
are  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  its  Master,  Christ,  can  bring 
to  them.  For  this  reason,  rash  and  unwarranted  as  it  may 


280  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

seem,  I  have  determined  to  take  upon  myself  the  task  of 
finding  the  means  and  continuing  the  work  which  the  mis- 
sion is  now  doing." 

Thus  it  was  that  early  in  July,  1895,  the  Bishop  took  up 
his  residence  in  Stanton  street,  at  the  Cathedral  Mission, 
and  there  continued  for  a  month.  He  arrived  late  one 
afternoon,  coming  in  from  Mead's  Mount,  in  the  Catskills, 
where  he  had  consecrated  a  church.  An  observant  reporter 
noticed  that  he  wore  an  alpaca  coat,  and  a  straw  hat  of  the 
last  year's  fashion.  Opposite  the  mission  a  score  of  little 
girls  were  dancing  to  the  music  of  a  large  piano-organ.  That 
evening  he  addressed  a  meeting  of  the  Brotherhood  of  St. 
Andrew,  and  on  the  next  morning  he  entered  upon  the  usual 
duties  of  the  minister-in-charge.  The  Rev.  F.  R.  Bateman, 
to  whom  that  office  belonged,  had  been  sent  away  on  a 
vacation,  and  the  Bishop  was  taking  his  place. 

The  Tenth  Ward,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  Cathedral 
Mission  stood,  had  a  bad  reputation.  The  editor  of  St. 
Andrew's  Cross  printed  a  story  illustrative  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. "  It  is  said  that  when  Dr.  Stanton  Coit,  who  grafted 
the  university  settlement  idea  upon  our  system  of  philan- 
thropic work,  decided  to  move  from  his  comfortable  uptown 
residence  to  narrow  quarters  in  a  Forsyth-street  tenement, 
he  employed  a  truckman  to  move  his  library.  When  he 
gave  the  address  the  man  appeared  to  be  dumbfounded. 
'Why,'  he  managed  to  say,  as  he  surveyed  the  polished 
gentleman  before  him,  'you're  not  going  to  live  in  Forsyth 
street?'  'Certainly,'  was  the  reply.  'But  Forsyth  street 
is  in  the  Tenth  Ward,'  urged  the  truckman.  'I  know  that,' 
said  Dr.  Coit  quietly.  'But  the  Tenth  Ward  is  so  bad  I 
had  to  move  out  of  it  myself,'  persisted  the  man,  no  doubt 
feeling  it  his  bounden  duty  to  prevent  one  whose  appear- 
ance and  habits  were  so  out  of  keeping  with  his  proposed 
environment  from  making  a  martyr  of  himself." 

The  situation  was  so  unusual,  and  the  doings  of  the 
Bishop,  even  under  commonplace  conditions,  were  of  such 
general  interest,  that  the  newspapers  for  several  days  gave 


A   SOJOURN   IN   STANTON   STREET  281 

the  matter  a  good  deal  of  space.  It  was  impossible  to  enter 
upon  this  undertaking  quietly,  as  he  had  hoped.  His  first 
visitor  was  a  reporter,  and  thereafter  for  some  time  they 
lay  in  wait  for  him,  attending  his  services,  taking  notes 
of  his  addresses,  and  keeping  the  public  minutely  informed 
as  to  his  manner  of  life.  They  made  sketches  of  his  study 
and  of  his  bedroom.  They  discovered  that  he  had  his 
bath  at  seven  o'clock,  and  that  he  breakfasted  on  a  roll,  a 
cup  of  coffee  and  two  eggs,  which  were  boiled  soft.  They 
described  how  he  baptized  children.  "The  two  babies," 
said  the  World  reporter,  "thoroughly  disapproved  of  the 
whole  proceeding.  Each  one  grew  still  for  a  moment  as 
the  Bishop  took  it  in  his  arms.  Each  one  gave  his  black 
bands  a  clutch  and  a  stare.  Then  each  burst  into  an  ever- 
rising  shriek  of  horror  and  rage.  But  the  Bishop,  holding 
each  child  in  turn  with  an  experienced  arm  in  just  the  right 
place,  moved  steadily  on  with  the  service." 

The  reporters  recorded  the  comments  of  the  neighbors. 
"'But  I  hear  he's  a  learned  man  and  very  great,'  said 
Gordon,  the  druggist  at  Stanton  and  Essex  streets,  whose 
card  bears,  'Diplomated  with  honorable  mention.'  And 
he  went  on,  'It  is  a  great  thing  for  us,  and  we  are  glad.  I 
think  we  will  remember  it  for  years.' ' 

'I  see,'  remarked  Weinberger,  the  tailor,  at  133  Stanton 
street,  'that  he  is  fond  of  children.  He  pats  them  on  the 
head  as  he  walks  along.  Yes,  we  all  know  that  he  is  here, 
and  everybody  runs  to  the  windows  as  he  goes  by.  It  is 
like  a  procession  with  a  band.  I  think  he  is  a  good  man, 
and  will  do  no  harm.' 

'He  makes  business  heavy  for  me,'  said  the  patrolman 
on  the  beat.  'Everybody  is  talking  about  it,  and  when  he  is 
on  the  street  the  word  is  passed  around  that  the  Bishop  is 
to  be  seen.  Then  the  people  run.  No,  I  don't  think  any- 
body is  up  to  date  unless  he  can  say  that  he  saw  the  Bishop.' ' 

The  reporters  peered  in  through  the  door  as  he  visited  the 
sick  on  the  fourth  floors  of  rear  tenements,  "with  the  bed 
in  one  corner,  and  onion  soup  cooking  on  the  stove  in  the 


282  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

other  corner,  with  two  rats  fighting  under  the  bed,  and  the 
baby  shrieking  at  the  window." 

The  Tribune  described  the  district.  "It  is  traversed  by 
public  conveyances  which  few  of  the  residents  of  the  upper 
city  have  ever  seen,  and  the  streets  are  less  familiar  to 
them  than  many  an  avenue  which  lies  on  the  other  side  of 
the  ocean.  Its  signs  are  written  in  characters  unknown  to 
them.  It  has  its  circulating  libraries  which  contain  only 
books  written  with  Hebrew  characters  to  express  phoneti- 
cally bad  German.  It  has  six  daily  papers  printed  in 
Hebrew  characters,  and  a  large  Russian  population.  In 
the  midst  of  this  district,  where  tenement  houses  rise  high 
in  the  air,  where  many  blocks  shelter  from  2000  to  2400 
people  each,  where  the  gospel  of  cleanliness  has  not  yet  been 
accepted,  where  men  and  women  look  prematurely  old, 
where  childhood  is  without  pleasure,  where  manhood  is 
endless  toil,  and  old  age  a  burden,  —  there  is  the  Cathedral 
Mission  in  which  the  Bishop  makes  his  home." 

The  Bishop  himself,  however,  found  no  hardship  in  his 
situation,  and  declined  to  consider  his  work  as  containing 
any  element  of  martyrdom. 

"Don't  imagine,"  he  wrote  to  the  Rev.  F.  Ward  Denys 
"that  there  is  anything  heroic  in  my  going  there  or  any 
especial  risk.  There  are  certain  questions  concerning  the 
problem  there  to  which  I  cannot  get  an  answer  second-hand, 
and  I  should  be  a  very  poor  lot,  if  I  were  not  willing  to  sub- 
mit to  the  very  insignificant  inconvenience  or  discomfort 
involved  in  looking  into  them." 

"It  is  a  shame  and  an  outrage  on  the  people  of  Stanton 
street,"  he  said,  to  a  Times  reporter,  "to  represent  that  I 
am  going  into  the  slums.  While  the  people  there  may  not 
have  so  much  room  to  themselves  as  the  people  around 
Washington  Square,  they  are  respectable.  The  difference 
is  that  they  are  amid  cramped  surroundings. 

"I  deprecate  the  personal  element  that  has  been  intro- 
duced into  my  proposed  sojourn  at  the  Cathedral  Mission. 
I  am  not  going  to  undergo  martyrdom,  nor  am  I  to  suffer 


A   SOJOURN    IN    STANTON    STREET  283 

any  great  hardship.  This  will  be  nothing  new  in  my  ex- 
perience. In  all  my  pastorates  I  have  intermingled  with 
the  people  who  live  from  day  to  day,  who  earn  their  bread 
by  the  sweat  of  their  brow.  Of  such  are  the  persons  among 
whom  I  am  to  labor  in  Stanton  street.  There  is,  of  course, 
mission  work  in  connection  with  the  Cathedral  Mission,  but 
it  is  not  doing  what  is  popularly  called  work  among  the 
slums.  I  don't  believe  in  slumming.  Whatever  visits  I 
make  while  I  am  at  the  Mission  will  be  purely  pastoral 
visits.  I  will  not  go  into  the  houses  of  the  people  looking 
around  me  as  though  I  were  in  an  old  curiosity  shop." 

The  rooms  which  the  Bishop  occupied  were  those  which 
were  used  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bateman,  and  which  had  been 
lived  in  before  him  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles  James  Wills. 
Wills  had  worked  there  as  an  officer  of  the  Brotherhood  of  St. 
Andrew,  while  the  Mission  was  maintained  by  St.  George's 
Church.  He  was  one  of  the  most  devoted,  untiring  and  effi- 
cient laymen  not  only  in  the  history  of  his  evangelistic  society, 
but  in  the  whole  annals  of  religious  work  in  New  York.  He 
set  an  example  which  was  a  new  inspiration  to  the  Brother- 
hood. He  worked  beyond  his  strength,  and  literally  gave  his 
life  for  the  good  of  his  poor  neighbors.  Bishop  Potter,  speak- 
ing of  the  Mission  House  as  a  place  of  residence,  said,"  I  never 
heard  Wills  complain."  But  Wills  never  complained  about 
anything.  His  friends  complained,  though  in  vain,  about 
the  burdens  which  he  took  upon  himself.  He  said  one  time 
that  there  was  a  text  in  the  New  Testament  with  which  he 
could  never  get  his  wife  to  agree  :  that  was  the  place  where 
St.  Paul  says,  "Love  the  brotherhood."  She  felt  that  the 
Brotherhood  was  taking  too  much  out  of  him.  But  he 
loved  the  brotherhood,  and  all  the  brothers,  especially  those 
in  Stanton  street. 

On  the  first  day  of  Bishop  Potter's  residence  he  had  a 
call  from  Father  Ducey,  pastor  of  St.  Leo's  (Roman  Catholic) 
Church.  Such  an  interesting  visitor  could  not  come  and  go 
unnoticed.  A  World  reporter  noticed  him,  and  that  journal 
asked  him  to  write  a  letter  about  his  visit :  which  he  did. 


284  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

"I  hoped  to  go  quietly  to  the  Cathedral  Mission,"  said 
Father  Ducey,  "and  leave  it  before  the  representatives  of 
the  press  started  in  for  their  day's  work.  I  did  not  have 
the  good  fortune  to  miss  the  sleepless  and  ubiquitous 
reporter.  Three  of  your  craft  saw  me,  and  have  given  to 
the  press  the  news  of  my  visit  to  Bishop  Potter. 

"I  have  known  Bishop  Potter  from  my  youth.  He  was 
pastor  of  St.  John's  Church,  Troy,  when  I  was  a  seminarian. 
As  rector  of  Grace  Church,  and  as  Bishop  of  New  York,  I 
have  had  most  friendly  relations  with  him.  He  has  always 
been  very  kind  to  me,  and  I  have  learned  to  love  and  re- 
spect him  for  his  good  and  fearless  courage. 

"My  object  in  visiting  the  Bishop  was  to  show  him,  as 
delicately  as  I  could,  how  deeply  I  appreciate  and  approve 
his  act  in  becoming  the  humble  rector  of  the  Mission  Parish. 
.  .  .  Bishop  Potter  is  working  to  manifest  his  sympathy  and 
devotion  for  the  well-being  of  God's  multitude.  I  join 
with  him  in  heart  and  soul." 

Father  Ducey  likened  Bishop  Potter  to  Cardinal  Man- 
ning. "Bishop  Potter  has  gone  from  place  to  place,  from 
prison  to  almshouse,  from  district  to  district  in  the  tenement 
neighborhoods.  His  sympathies  seem  to  have  broadened. 
His  courage  seems  untrammeled.  He  never  hesitates  to 
say  strongly  what  are  his  convictions  and  what  is  demanded 
of  the  more  favored  members  of  society.  May  God  grant 
that  he  will  become  still  more  powerful  and  fearless  in  the 
interests  of  truth,  justice  and  religion." 

The  Bishop  made  all  the  reporters  understand  that  the 
Mission  was  vitally  related  to  the  Cathedral.  "The  object 
of  the  Mission,  which  fell  into  our  hands  about  a  year  ago, 
is  to  impress  on  the  people  the  real  cathedral  idea.  The 
popular  idea  of  a  cathedral  is  that  it  is  a  beautiful  building, 
devoted  to  worship  ;  but  we  want  to  impress  on  the  people 
that  a  cathedral  is  a  very  live,  working  institution.  The 
canons  of  the  new  Cathedral  will  take  their  part  in  active 
mission  work.  This  Mission  is  already  an  articulate  part 
of  the  Cathedral,  and  the  plan  is  ultimately  to  include  all 


A   SOJOURN   IN   STANTON   STREET  285 

city  missions  under  the  cathedral  control.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  have  a  capitular  staff  of  cultivated  canons  attached 
to  a  cathedral,  but  it  is  important  that  they  should  have 
what  most  qualifies  them  to  talk  to  other  men,  —  that  is, 
an  experience  and  knowledge  of  real  life.  So  the  canons 
of  the  new  Cathedral  will  take  their  turn  in  working  here 
in  what  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  a  neighborhood  mission. 
The  archdeacon  has  done  it  already,  and  I  am  simply  serv- 
ing my  term  here  as  one  of  the  cathedral  staff." 

After  this  initial  publicity,  the  month  passed  quietly,  its 
days  filled  with  pastoral  visitations,  conferences,  meetings 
of  societies,  sermons,  services  and  sacraments.  The  Bishop's 
mail  was  somewhat  increased  by  the  receipt  of  letters  of 
appreciation  and  gratitude ;  some  from  his  neighbors, 
written  on  paper  wrhich  announced  their  trade  or  business ; 
some  from  appreciative  persons  in  other  cities.  It  did  not 
please  him  to  have  his  friendly  visit  made  so  much  of,  and 
treated  as  if  there  were  something  abnormal  about  it.  It 
seemed  to  him  a  criticism  on  the  comfortable  clergy. 
Meanwhile,  all  his  habitual  interests  in  social  betterment 
were  informed  and  quickened.  The  district  was  one  in 
which,  as  he  said,  people  lived  in  cramped  quarters.  The 
census  showed  that  the  square  mile  in  the  midst  of  which 
the  Mission  stood  was  inhabited  by  350,000  people.  If  all 
the  other  blocks  had  been  as  densely  tenanted  as  the  one 
across  the  street  from  the  Mission,  there  would  have  been  a 
million.  He  understood,  as  never  before,  the  vastness  of 
the  human  need,  both  physical  and  moral. 


CHAPTER  XX 

HUMANI   NIHIL   ALIENUM 

1895-1898 

HENRY  POTTER'S  plan  of  life  followed  the  formula  of 
Terence.  The  horizon  of  his  interest  included  all  things 
human. 

He  liked  to  belong  to  clubs  where  he  met  men  of  profes- 
sions and  pursuits  other  than  his  own.  In  the  first  year 
of  his  ministry  in  New  York  he  joined  the  Century  Associa- 
tion, of  which  he  was  a  member  all  the  rest  of  his  life.  He 
was  for  twelve  years  its  vice-president,  for  eleven  years  its 
president.  His  election  to  these  offices  shows  his  popularity 
among  the  authors  and  artists;  the  lawyers  and  doctors, 
the  merchants  and  bankers,  who  compose  that  society.  He 
was  not  a  frequenter  of  the  club-house :  he  was  too  busy 
for  that.  But  he  was  recognized  by  his  fellow-members 
as  a  "whole-souled  Centurion."  They  knew  him  well,  as 
the  years  passed ;  and  the  more  they  knew  him,  the  better 
they  liked  him.  So  it  was  with  the  Aldine  Club,  the  Players 
Club,  the  University  Club,  and  others. 

He  was  made  a  Mason,  while  he  was  in  Troy,  joining  Alt. 
Zion  lodge,  No.  311,  in  1866.  He  was  a  member  of 
Jerusalem  Chapter,  No.  8,  and  of  Coeur  de  Lion  Command- 
ery,  No.  23.  He  was  a  life  member  of  Kane  Lodge,  No. 
454,  and  of  all  the  Scottish  Rite  bodies  in  New  York.  In 
1897,  in  Boston,  he  was  crowned  an  honorary  33d  degree 
Mason.  He  served  as  Crand  Chaplain  of  the  Grand  Lodge 
in  1895,  1896  and  1897,  having  the  title  of  Right  Worshipful. 
Kane  Lodge  gave  him  a  magnificent  Grand  Chaplain's  jewel. 

"I  am  bound  in  order  to  own,"  he  said,  "  that  if  originally 

280 


HUMANI  NIHIL  ALIENUM  287 

I  had  not  been  attracted  to  Masonry  by  its  value  as  what 
may  be  called  a  universal  social  solvent,  I  might  never  have 
sought  its  fellowship.  I  was,  at  an  early  period  of  my  life, 
about  to  travel  in  foreign  countries,  and  I  was  assured  that 
as  a  Freemason,  I  should  be  recognized  and  considered, 
when  otherwise  I  might  have  been  forlorn  and  neglected. 
Well,  Most  Excellent  Grand  High  Priest  and  companions, 
[he  was  addressing  a  Grand  Chapter]  I  found,  by  happy  ex- 
perience, that  that  assurance  was  true.  Once,  and  again, 
when  the  emergency  seemed  to  disclose  no  other  way  out 
of  a  dilemma,  I  have  solved  it  by  revealing  myself  as  a 
Mason  :  and  it  is  certainly  a  noteworthy  fact  that  never 
anywhere  did  I  make  that  disclosure  without  finding  other 
Masons  who  recognized  and  responded  to  it."  "Masonry," 
he  said,  "has  a  mission  greater  even  than  its  most  devoted 
adherents  dream  of  to-day.  While  we  look  back  to  the  dim 
past  and  see  how  much  has  been  accomplished  by  Masonry, 
the  future  will  develop  a  still  greater  Masonry,  more  useful 
to  man,  and  still  wider  in  its  scope  and  in  the  good  it  does 
to  the  human  race." 

As  the  long  tenure  of  his  episcopate  extended,  he  was 
called  upon  to  take  part  in  all  sorts  of  public  functions.  He 
was  the  natural  representative  of  the  Christian  clergy  of 
New  York.  And  this  recognition  was  in  large  measure 
independent  of  his  official  station.  It  was  not  the  bishop 
but  the  man  to  whom  the  people  turned.  In  East  Seventy- 
ninth  street,  upon  a  tablet  on  the  front  of  one  of  the  lodging- 
houses  of  the  City  and  Suburban  Homes  Company  (which  is 
a  memorial  of  him)  is  inscribed  the  statement  that  the 
building  was  erected  in  recognition  of  his  "wisdom  and 
courage  and  righteousness  and  service."  It  was  by  reason 
of  these  qualities  that  his  words  were  heard  with  attention, 
arid  all  his  acts  were  of  interest  to  the  public.  It  was  in 
tribute  to  his  character  that  he  was  called  "the  first  citizen 
of  New  York." 

Thus  on  the  thirtieth  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Gettys- 
burg, it  was  Bishop  Potter  who  was  asked  to  deliver  the 


288  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

oration  at  the  dedicating  of  the  monument  commemorative 
of  the  New  York  men  who  fell  on  that  field.  He  spoke  of 
the  "Heroisms  of  the  Unknown/'  praising  the  self-sacrifice 
of  obscure  men.  "The  work  by  the  great  unknown  for  the 
great  unknown  —  the  work  that  by  fidelity  in  the  ranks, 
courage  in  the  trenches,  patience  at  the  picket  line,  vigilance 
at  the  out-post,  is  done  by  that  great  host  that  bear  no 
splendid  insignia  of  rank,  and  figure  in  no  commander's 
dispatches  —  this  work,  with  its  incalculable  and  unfore- 
seen consequences  for  a  whole  people  —  is  not  this  work, 
which  we  are  here  to-day  to  commemorate,  at  once  the 
noblest  and  most  vast?" 

Again  on  a  like  occasion  (March,  1895)  at  the  unveiling 
of  the  Martin  memorial  tablet,  in  commemoration  of  the 
battle  of  Bull  Run,  he  spoke  in  a  similar  strain  of  the  com- 
mon soldier,  dwelling  upon  our  debt  of  gratitude  to  him.  He 
spoke  also  of  the  advantage  of  defeat.  "On  the  one  side," 
he  said,  "was  the  ardor,  the  vehemence,  the  impassioned 
enthusiasm  of  men  who  honestly  felt  that  they  were  repelling 
an  invader ;  while  on  the  other  side  was  a  mass  of  imper- 
fectly drilled,  organized,  equipped  troops  led  by  commanders 
who  were  as  yet  strange  to  them,  undertaking  a  business  in 
which  so  far  as  actual  fighting  was  concerned  the  great 
majority  of  them  were  wholly  without  experience,  and  many 
of  them  without  personal  enthusiasm.  It  is  not  wonderful 
that  they  failed  :  nay,  notwithstanding  the  tragedy  of  their 
failure,  we  are  warranted,  I  think,  in  saying  that  it  was  well 
that  they  did  fail.  They  had  to  learn  the  lesson  of  respect 
for  a  brave  and  worthy  foe." 

At  the  presentation  to  the  city  of  New  York  of  the 
Washington  Arch,  as  a  permanent  memorial  of  the  one 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  inauguration  of  the  first 
President,  Bishop  Potter  offered  prayer.  "Endow,"  he 
prayed,  "with  the  spirit  of  wisdom  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  the  Governor  of  this  Commonwealth,  and 
all  those  whom  we  entrust  in  Thy  name  with  the  authority 
of  governance,  to  the  end  that  there  be  peace  at  home,  and 


HUMANI   NIHIL  ALIENUM  289 

that  we  keep  our  place  among  the  nations  of  the  world ; 
that  so,  from  henceforth,  this  memorial  arch,  spanning  the 
highway  over  which  the  people  pass,  may  proclaim  to  all 
men  the  nation's  gratitude  and  homage  to  its  founder,  and 
recall  to  us  that  heavenly  sufficiency  in  which  he  wrought 
and  builded,  and  to  which,  as  Thou,  0  Christ,  hast  taught 
us,  we  forever  lift  our  prayer. 

"For  his  wisdom,  courage,  singleness  of  purpose,  un- 
selfishness, and  rare  and  singular  foresight,  we  give  Thee 
thanks  to-day.  For  all  that  he  taught  us  by  his  constancy 
to  duty,  his  freedom  from  sordid  aims  and  motives,  his 
steadfast  and  resplendent  patriotism,  we  bless  and  praise 
Thy  name.  Save  us  from  the  folly  that  honors  his  memory 
and  forgets  to  imitate  his  example ;  and  grant  to  this  people 
over  whom  he  was,  first  of  all,  chosen  to  rule,  grace  and 
courage  to  be  true  to  the  principles  which  he  both  taught 
and  lived." 

In  the  same  month,  the  Bishop  was  sitting  as  umpire 
in  the  settlement  of  differences  between  the  Marble  Workers' 
Union  and  the  Marble  Industry  Employers'  Association. 
To  this  task  he  was  invited  as  "a  third  party  who  has  no 
bias."  He  was  impressed  on  the  one  side  by  the  common 
sense  of  the  working-men's  committee,  and  on  the  other 
side  by  the  fairness  of  the  employers.  He  found  that  at 
the  heart  of  the  contention  there  was  a  misunderstanding, 
which  he  was  able  to  clear  away.  It  was  the  beginning  of 
an  extended  series  of  such  services. 

In  August,  1895,  in  residence  in  Stanton  street,  he  was 
appealing,  through  the  Churchman,  for  the  Summer  Home 
at  Tompkins  Cove,  connected  with  the  Cathedral  Mission. 
The  house,  he  wrote,  is  "filled  full  of  children  from  these 
closely  packed  homes  and  streets."  He  needed  a  thousand 
dollars  at  once. 

In  September,  he  was  requesting  the  Board  of  Education 
to  build  a  new  school  house  in  Rivington  street,  and  provide 
it  with  a  proper  playground,  and  the  Board  was  agreeing 
to  do  as  the  Bishop  asked. 


290  HEXRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

In  February,  1896,  he  was  preaching  at  the  dedication  of 
Grace  Chapel.  "At  such  a  time,"  he  said,  in  view  of  the 
crying  needs  of  man,  "for  the  Church  of  God  to  sit  still 
and  be  content  with  theories  of  its  duty  outlawed  by  time, 
and  long  ago  demonstrated  to  be  grotesquely  inadequate 
to  the  demands  of  a  living  situation  —  this  is  to  deserve 
the  scorn  of  men  and  the  curse  of  God.  Take  my  word 
for  it,  men  and  brethren,"  he  cried,  "unless  you  and  I  and 
all  who  have  any  gift  or  stewardship  of  talents  or  means,  of 
whatever  sort,  are  willing  to  get  up  out  of  our  sloth  and 
ease  and  selfish  dilettantism  of  service,  and  get  down 
among  the  people  who  are  battling  amid  their  poverty 
and  ignorance  —  then  verily  the  Church  in  its  stately 
splendor,  its  apostolic  order,  its  venerable  ritual,  its 
decorous  and  dignified  conventions,  is  revealed  as  simply 
a  monstrous  and  insolent  impertinence." 

At  the  request  of  the  Cathedral  trustees  Bishop  Potter 
took  nearly  three  months  of  the  winter  of  1896-1897  for  the 
purpose  of  presenting  the  cathedral  idea  to  the  people  of  the 
diocese.  He  arranged  for  the  help  of  neighboring  bishops  to 
take  his  visitations,  put  the  details  of  episcopal  administra- 
tion into  the  hands  of  the  archdeacons,  and  devoted  him- 
self to  the  work  of  completing  the  choir  of  the  Cathedral. 

"The  times,"  he  said  afterward,  "were  not  opportune 
for  such  an  effort,  but  it  was  on  the  whole  encouragingly 
successful,  and  we  received  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  of 
dollars.  I  may  as  well  confess  that  I  am  but  poorly  endowed 
for  such  a  task,  and  that  I  approached  it  with  no  little  re- 
luctance. Under  such  circumstances  the  kindness  which  I 
experienced  at  many  hands  is  something  that  I  can  never 
forget." 

On  Easter  Even,  1897,  the  Archdeacon  of  New  York 
brought  to  the  Bishop's  house  a  box  containing  a  thousand 
cards.  On  each  card  was  written  the  name  of  a  donor  to 
the  building,  the  amount  of  his  gift  and  a  wish  that  the 
Bishop  might  have  a  happy  Easter.  Xo  contribution  of 
more  than  one  hundred  dollars  was  accepted  for  this  purpose. 


HUMANI   NIHIL  ALIENUM  291 

From  that  sum  they  ran  down  the  scale  of  financial  possi- 
bility to  one  cent.  Many  pledges  were  for  less  than  ten 
cents.  The  cards  came  from  all  sorts  of  people  —  Sunday- 
school  children,  inmates  of  the  blind  asylum  and  the  old 
people's  home,  firemen,  policemen,  waitresses,  butlers, 
working  girls,  clerks,  students,  people  well-to-do  and  ill-to- 
do.  The  givers  represented  many  varieties  of  religion,  - 
Hebrews,  Roman  Catholics,  Protestants  of  twenty  denomi- 
nations, Quakers.  The  gift  was  over  five  thousand  dollars, 
but  of  more  value  still  was  the  interest  of  all  these  people 
in  the  great  undertaking  of  the  Bishop. 

Preaching  in  May,  1897,  at  the  Bicentenary  of  Trinity 
Church,  he  commented  characteristically  on  the  fact  that 
the  parish  was  begun  and  the  first  minister  called  by  the 
Colonial  Assembly.  "It  is  a  fact  of  profound  significance, 
I  think,  that  the  initiative  in  the  whole  matter  was  civic. 
The  legislating  and  governing  body  of  two  hundred  years 
ago  faced  a  situation.  There  was  corruption  of  manners. 
There  was  deterioration  of  morals.  There  was  lawlessness 
and  vice.  Yes,  and  let  there  be  laws  to  punish  these  things, 
and  officers  to  administer  and  enforce  the  laws  —  did  it 
say?  Yes,  but  something  of  infinitely  more  consequence 
than  that.  The  civic  forces  of  those  days,  the  men  and  the 
legislatures  that  represented  the  best  mind  and  the  deliber- 
ate will  of  the  people,  said,  in  effect,  also,  Behind  the  law 
there  must  be  another  and  a  higher  force.  Not  temporal 
sanctions  alone,  but  those  that  are  supreme  and  eternal, 
must  be  made  effectual  among  this  people.  The  fact  of 
their  relation  not  merely  to  a  civic  tribunal  of  to-day,  but 
to  a  divine  tribunal,  both  here  and  in  eternity,  must  be 
brought  home  to  them.  The  motives  and  constraints  and 
inspirations  that  not  only  touch  the  human  will  and  the 
human  conscience,  but  transform  it  —  these  must  be  held 
up  to  men,  and  in  all  their  august  authority  must  be  the 
highest,  the  final  appeal." 

This  he  understood  to  be  the  significance  of  the  Christian 
Church  in  its  relation  to  the  life  of  the  people. 


292  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

The  Lambeth  Conference  met  that  year  (1897)  and  the 
Bishop  went  over  not  only  to  attend  the  Conference  but  to 
fulfil  an  appointment  as  Select  Preacher  to  the  University 
of  Cambridge.  He  preached  in  May  in  Great  St.  Mary's. 

The  Bishop  came  back  from  this  journey  with  his  arm  in 
a  sling,  having  been  thrown  from  his  horse  in  Frankfort, 
dislocating  his  shoulder.  He  was  absent,  that  year,  from 
the  Diocesan  Convention,  being  ill  with  a  disease  which  was 
then  beginning  to  disturb  the  general  comfort,  the  grippe. 

In  his  annual  address,  which  was  read  by  Dr.  Nelson,  he 
spoke  of  the  work  of  the  Lambeth  Conference.  He  felt 
that  after  a  third  of  a  century  of  existence  it  ought  to  have 
some  organic  outcome.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  the 
sentimental  value  of  the  meeting  of  two  hundred  and  fifty 
bishops  "to  spend  a  month  in  each  other's  company  in  the 
discussion  of  questions  of  more  or  less  general  importance 
to  the  Church."  "Shall  there  be  no  closer  union?  Shall 
not  this  great  Church  strengthen  itself  for  still  greater 
tasks  and  triumphs  by  some  action  which  shall  structurally 
unify,  and,  so  to  speak,  solidify  her?  At  this  point  there 
was,  in  the  late  Lambeth  Conference,  a  very  prevalent 
attitude  of  mind  which  seemed  to  push  conservatism  in 
action  almost  to  the  verge  of  impotent  timidity."  He 
referred  particularly  to  the  debates  on  "a  central  consul- 
tive  body"  and  "a  tribunal  of  reference."  These  proposals 
were  voted  down  in  fear  of  making  an  Angelican  pope. 
Bishop  Potter  did  not  share  this  fear. 

"For  myself, "  he  said,  "I  must  confess  that  the  imaginary 
terrors  of  an  impossible  papacy  do  not  so  greatly  dismay 
me  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  me  to  discern,  in  religion  as 
in  other  enterprises  that  are  human  only  and  not  both 
divine  and  human,  the  value  of  organization."  "It  ought 
to  be  possible,"  he  added,  "to  make  national  churches 
stronger,  wiser  and  more  effective  in  the  exercise  of  autono- 
mous functions,  by  making  it  competent  for  them  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  best  wisdom,  learning  and  experience  to 
be  found  anywhere  in  the  whole  fellowship." 


HUMANI   NIHIL  ALIENUM  293 

The  first  Mills  Hotel  was  opened  in  October,  1897,  and  the 
Bishop  made  an  address  on  the  occasion.  "If  I  have  under- 
stood," he  said,  "what  Mr.  Mills  has  said  to  me  of  his 
purposes  and  aims  here,  this  is  not  in  any  sense  an  eleemosy- 
nary work.  No  man  is  coming  here  to  receive  something 
for  nothing.  We  are  not  creating  here  another  institution, 
of  which  we  already  have  so  many  in  New  York,  that  shall 
educate  men  in  the  habit  of  indolent  dependence  on  their 
fellowmen.  The  mental  attitude  which  seeks  to  separate 
the  works  of  philanthropy  from  great  business  principles 
is  not  apparent  here.  Mr.  Mills  has  applied  here  the  judg- 
ment of  a  mind  well  trained  to  deal  with  civic  problems,  and 
has  attempted  such  a  solution  of  some  of  these  problems  as 
will  be  of  incalculable  benefit  to  humanity."  The  Bishop 
referred  to  the  model  houses  which  Lord  Rowton  was  build- 
ing in  London.  He  watched  with  interest  the  social  ex- 
periments which  were  in  progress  in  England,  and  was  in 
hearty  sympathy  with  the  undertaking  of  such  experiments 
here.  Sometimes  they  succeeded,  like  the  Mills  hotels, 
sometimes  they  failed,  like  the  Subway  Tavern,  but  their 
promoters  could  always  count  on  Bishop  Potter's  coopera- 
tion. He  was  glad  to  give  his  blessing  to  every  honest 
purpose  to  help  the  poor. 

He  was  equally  concerned  to  help  the  rich.  In  the  natural 
order  of  things,  he  knew  a  great  many  of  the  wealthiest  men 
and  women  of  the  richest  city  in  the  country.  They  be- 
longed to  his  church ;  he  was  responsible  for  them.  Ac- 
cording to  his  theory  of  life,  social  results  are  best  brought 
about  by  friendship.  He  liked  people,  naturally ;  he  was 
interested  in  human  beings.  It  made  singularly  little 
difference  to  him  where  they  lived.  The  country  attracted 
him  as  well  as  the  city ;  he  went  with  equal  pleasure  to 
Tuxedo  and  to  Wappinger's  Falls ;  he  had  friends  both  in 
Fifth  Avenue  and  in  Stanton  street.  Bishop  Wilberforce, 
after  a  good  deal  of  experience,  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
society  could  not  be  saved  by  dining  with  it.  Bishop  Potter 
was  not  so  sure.  Anyhow,  whether  for  the  salvation  of 


294  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Society  or  not,  he  spent  many  evenings  "dining  out."  He 
enjoyed  it.  It  was  often  an  opportunity,  and  enabled  him 
to  say  a  right  word  at  a  right  time,  but  it  was  also  a  pleas- 
ure. It  was  an  agreeable  relaxation. 

He  liked  even  the  making  of  speeches  at  the  public 
dinners.  He  had  a  keen  sense  of  liumor,  an  uncommon 
facility  in  the  effective  turning  of  phrases,  and  a  fund  of 
anecdote  which  made  speaking  easy.  His  long  and  often 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  people  of  most  renown  in 
the  city,  —  with  men  of  affairs,  writers  of  books,  persons 
of  notable  achievement,  —  gave  his  words  a  certain  familiar 
and  domestic  quality  which  his  hearers  found  very  pleasant. 
This  acquaintance  was  greatly  extended  by  his  habit  of 
spending  many  of  his  vacations  abroad.  He  seemed  to 
have  been  everywhere  and  to  know  everybody. 

The  reporters  were  fortunate  on  several  occasions  in 
bringing  away  from  these  after-dinner  speeches  not  only 
the  ideas  but  the  felicitous  words  in  which  the  Bishop 
characteristically  expressed  himself.  They  are  the  best 
remaining  records  of  his  unfailing  readiness  and  grace. 

The  Ohio  Society  gave  a  dinner  (January  8,  1898)  in 
honor  of  Mayor  Strong,  upon  his  retirement  from  office. 
"According  to  the  instructions  which  I  have  received  from 
the  chairman,"  said  Bishop  Potter,  "I  am  to  make  Colonel 
Strong's  speech.  There  are  grave  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
a  charge  of  that  task,  for  the  Colonel  has  a  facility  in  the 
use  of  emphatic  language  which,  were  I  to  indulge  in  it, 
would  hardly  be  regarded  as  canonical.  When  he  began 
his  present  completed  task,  knowing  his  characteristics  in 
that  direction,  I  assured  him  privately  that  I  would  issue 
to  him  a  license  for  what  in  ancient  times  was  called  the 
power  of  anathema  within  discreet  limits.  I  am  not  sure 
lie  has  always  confined  himself  to  those  limits ;  and  I  am 
quite  free  to  say,  now  that  I  am  permitted  to  address  him 
unofficially,  that  I  am  not  at  all  sure,  had  I  been  in  his 
place,  I  should  have  done  any  better. 

"On  one  occasion  in  the  House  of  Bishops,  a  member,  a 


HUMANI  NIHIL  ALIEXUM  295 

brilliant  man,  known  to  a  good  many  in  this  room,  who  is 
now  deceased,  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  his  temper,  and 
to  indulge  in  language  which  was  not  at  all  parliamentary. 
He  apologized,  and  afterwards  said,  'I  feel  constrained  to 
say  that  this  House  should  set  forth  a  form  of  language 
to  be  used  by  a  Christian  man  under  great  provocation.' ' 

At  the  same  time,  the  official  journal  is  filled  full  with 
the  brief  record  of  a  great  number  of  speeches  and  sermons 
in  addition  to  his  canonical  engagements.  He  addresses 
the  Guild  of  Organists,  speaks  in  the  interest  of  College 
Settlements,  presides  over  the  Council  for  Mediation  and 
Concilation,  preaches  at  Harvard,  at  Wellesley,  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania,  at  Bryn  Mawr,  at  the  College  of 
the  City  of  New  York,  at  Vassar.  He  is  active  in  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of  New  York.  He  takes  his  part 
at  Cooper  Union  in  a  meeting  in  favor  of  international 
arbitration,  where  the  hostile  interest  of  a  portion  of  the 
audience  needs  the  quieting  influence  of  the  police.  He 
responds  to  invitations  from  the  Typotheta?,  the  Red  Cross, 
the  Consumers'  League,  the  State  Hospital  for  the  Insane, 
the  Church  Congress.  He  addresses  the  Contemporary 
Club  of  St.  Louis,  the  Liberal  Club  of  Buffalo,  the  Church 
Workers  of  Pittsburgh,  the  Civic  Club  of  Brooklyn,  the 
Forty-seventh  Regiment  of  New  York  Volunteers  at  Fort 
Adams. 

"My  dear  Bishop  Potter,"  wrote  Dr.  Henry  M.  Field, 
editor  of  the  Evangelist,  "you  are  the  best  man  in  the 
world.  You  always  say  the  right  word  and  do  the  right 
thing,  but  how  you  find  the  time  to  do  it  all  is  a  mystery. 
Your  influence  goes  far  beyond  your  own  Episcopal  Church, 
large  and  powerful  as  that  is,  and  you  are  equally  at  home 
among  the  rich  and  poor.  I  have  been  looking  to  you  to 
solve  some  of  the  social  problems  that  perplex  us  all.  For 
my  part,  I  am  groping  in  the  dark,  but  God  give  us  light. 
May  you  live  far  into  the  next  century,  and  help  greatly 
to  make  the  world  purer,  sweeter  and  happier  than  it  now 


296  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

And  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke  wrote,  "I  want  to  say  to  you, 
beneficent  prelate,  that  there  is  not  a  preacher  nor  a  church 
of  any  order  in  New  York  that  does  not  reap  a  substantial 
benefit  from  the  fact  that  you  are  the  bishop  of  this  diocese, 
and  therefore  we  are  all,  in  our  several  modes  and  manners, 
gratefully  yours." 

The  Annual  Convention  Addresses  of  these  years  show 
the  manner  in  which  he  pursued  his  main  business,  the 
administration  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York. 

He  was  concerned  (1896)  to  bring  to  the  parishes  of  the 
city  a  better  knowledge  of  the  missions  of  the  country. 
"There  are  very  few  of  our  great  city  congregations,"  he 
said,  "who  do  not  know  more  about  the  missionary  work  of 
Wyoming  or  Alaska  than  they  do  about  that  of  Rockland, 
Putman,  Sullivan  or  Ulster  counties  in  our  own  diocese." 

He  desired  to  raise  the  standard  of  admission  to  the 
ministry,  and  made  the  canonical  examinations  in  his 
diocese  more  thorough  than  before. 

He  commented  on  the  reply  of  the  Pope  to  the  Anglicans 
who  hoped  for  a  Roman  recognition  of  their  orders.  "A 
year  ago,"  he  said,  "I  referred,  in  this  place,  to  the  cour- 
teous communication  addressed  to  those  in  another  land 
who  are  of  our  spiritual  lineage  and  ancestry,  by  a  venerable 
Roman  ecclesiastic,  of  whose  kindly  purpose  nobody,  I 
suppose,  had  any  smallest  doubt ;  and  I  endeavored  to 
point  out  how  vain  and  illusory,  from  any  such  standpoint 
as  he  then  occupied,  were  the  hopes  and  aspirations  which  he 
then  expressed.  Since  then  he  has  made  them  even  more 
so  by  describing  all  other  chief  pastors  than  those  who  are 
his  own  curates  as  a  ( lawless  and  disorderly  crew, '  and  by 
pronouncing  all  other  orders  than  those  derived  from  the 
See  of  Peter  as  invalid  and  worthless.  It  is  a  declaration, 
let  me  say,  for  which  all  Christendom,  outside  his  own 
communion,  and  especially  our  own  branch  of  it,  has  reason 
to  be  profoundly  thankful.  I  cannot  readily  imagine  any 
greater  misfortune  to  the  cause  of  Jesus  Christ,  at  this 
moment,  than  any  other  declaration ;  and  I  confess  I  am 


HUMANI   NIHIL  ALIENUM  297 

moved,  in  view  of  the  very  considerable  temptation  to 
make  some  other,  more  ambiguous  and  less  explicit,  to 
respect  sincerely  the  courage  and  candor  that  prompted 
it.  That  it  is  made  in  large  ignorance  of  the  facts,  and  from 
a  somewhat  narrow  and  provincial  vision  of  the  situation, 
does  not  wholly  take  away  from  the  value  of  this  unshrink- 
ing frankness;  while  one  cannot  but  hope  that  its  effect 
upon  those  whose  fatuous  and  unmanly  procedure  had  in- 
vited and  provoked  it  may  be  deep  and  lasting.  Anglican 
Churchmen  and  American  Christians  of  the  same  lineage 
have  nothing  whatever  to  hope  from  the  Italian  prelate 
who  makes  bold  to  call  himself  the  vicar  of  God." 

Archbishop  Corrigan  wrote  a  polite  note  in  reference  to 
these  remarks,  saying  that  he  did  not  quite  understand 
their  meaning. 

The  Bishop  urged  more  diligent  examination  (1897)  of 
the  Church's  methods  of  instruction,  especially  in  the 
Sunday  Schools.  aA  generation  ago  the  questions  con- 
cerning historic  Christianity,  which  this  Church  of  all 
others  is  best  qualified  to  answer,  interested  only  a  most 
insignificant  minority.  To-day  they  appeal  to  a  great 
multitude  who  are  unsettled,  interrogative,  and  often  most 
favorably  disposed.  At  such  a  time  the  Sunday  School 
ought  to  be  a  foremost  agency  for  the  dissemination  of  a 
sound  and  sufficient  knowledge  concerning  the  Church's 
faith  and  order ;  and  to  this  end  no  pains  or  sacrifice  should 
be  spared." 

He  felt  the  need  of  a  clearly  defined  policy  of  Church 
extension  in  the  city  and  the  diocese.  "The  history  of 
the  growth  of  the  Church  in  New  York  might  justly  be 
described,  I  suppose,  as  the  history  of  a  largely  irresponsible 
voluntaryism,  more  or  less  tempered,  from  time  to  time,  by 
extemporaneous  canonical  legislation.  Individuals  have 
usually  gone  where  they  wanted  to  go ;  built  what  they 
wanted  to  build ;  and  sold,  or  abandoned,  what  they  had 
built,  when  they  wanted  to  do  so.  The  Church  has,  indeed, 
restricted  the  indulgence  of  this  individualism  from  time  to 


298  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

time,  in  some  imperfect  way ;  but  only  to  a  very  limited 
degree."  He  suggested  a  Diocesan  Board  of  Church  Ex- 
tension. 

He  touched  upon  the  question  of  the  "maintenance  of 
Church  edifices  and  properties  in  particular  localities  that 
gather  no  congregation  and  serve  no  spiritual  use,  or  one  so 
meagre  as  to  be  wholly  disproportioned  to  a  wise  use  of 
means."  He  held  that  it  should  be  "decided  by  other 
considerations  than  those  which  are  purely  sentimental." 

The  Cathedral,  he  said,  was  progressing ;  the  walls  of 
the  choir  were  rising,  and  by  the  munificence  of  Mrs.  C. 
W.  Wallace  of  Chicago,  a  "very  rich  and  costly  work  of 
art,  popularly  known  as  the  Tiffany  Chapel,  and  consisting 
of  an  altar,  reredos,  etc.  in  mosaic  work,"  was  to  be  placed 
in  the  crypt. 

He  deplored  (1898)  the  subordination  of  religion  to  the 
temporary  concerns  of  life.  "The  situation  is  such  as  was 
described  by  an  old  Roman  priest  in  New  England,  who 
said  to  a  friend  of  mine,  not  long  ago,  who  asked  him,  'How 
do  you  govern  your  people?'  'Ah,  sir,  a  few  of  them  by 
fear,  but  most  of  them  by  flattery.'  It  was  a  suggestive 
and  far-reaching  reply,  for  it  somewhat  coarsely  indicates 
that  deferential,  complaisant  attitude  of  religion  to  our 
modern  life  —  that  somewhat  invertebrate  and  effusive 
effort  to  adjust  preaching  and  service  and  social  relation- 
ships to  a  standpoint  which  is  neither  lofty  nor  spiritual, 
which,  I  think  it  must  be  owned,  is  to-day  a  type  of  the 
activities  of  religion  whether  in  the  pulpit,  the  parish,  or 
the  home." 

He  exalted  the  importance  of  preaching,  which  still  re- 
mains, he  said,  "the  mightiest  institution  known  to  man." 
But  he  doubted  the  value  of  extemporaneous  preaching. 
"I  must  own,"  he  said,  "to  the  amazement  with  which, 
on  those  rare  occasions  when  it  has  been  my  privilege  to 
hear  anybody  else  preach,  it  has  been  my  fortune,  now  and 
then,  to  hear  a  deacon  or  a  youthful  priest  get  up  and  inflict 
upon  a  Christian  congregation  of  devout  and  thoughtful 


HUMANI   NIHIL  ALIENUM  299 

people  the  crude  maunderings  —  they  deserve  to  be  called 
by  no  better  name  —  of  some  utterly  sophomoric  mind, 
extemporaneously  delivered  and  often  in  vulgar  and  un- 
grammatical  English.  I  know  we  have  come  upon  the  era 
of  extemporaneous  preaching,  and  I  am  told  often  enough 
that  'the  people  like  it  better.'  I  suppose  they  do,  for  we 
all  like  what  neither  taxes  the  attention  nor  touches  the 
conscience,  especially  if  it  be  soon  over.  But  I  maintain 
that  this  is  treating  a  most  tremendous  responsibility,  and 
a  most  glorious  and  august  opportunity,  with  scarcely  any 
respect  and  still  scantier  conscience.  Let  me  entreat  my 
brethren,  and  especially  my  young  brethren  of  the  clergy, 
to  write  at  least  one  sermon  in  the  week,  and  to  get  ready 
for  it,  and  for  every  sermon,  on  their  knees,  and  with  their 
Greek  Testaments  in  their  hands,  and  the  best  learning  of 
the  time  within  their  reach.  Do  you  want  men  to  listen  to 
you?  Then  prepare  for  them  something  which,  so  far  as 
you  can  make  it,  shall  be  worth  listening  to." 

He  spoke  with  approval  of  the  existence  of  different  kinds 
of  ritual  in  the  worship  of  the  Church.  "I  must  acknowl- 
edge for  my  own  part,"  he  said,  "that  when  I  see  or  hear 
some  services  marked  by  a  more  elaborate  and  ornate  usage, 
I  sympathize  with  that  Roman  priest  who,  having  witnessed 
a  'high  function'  in  one  of  the  churches  of  our  own  Commun- 
ion in  this  Diocese,  remarked,  I  am  told,  to  a  companion, 
'Very  fine  no  doubt,  but  for  myself  I  prefer  our  own  simple 
service.'  But,  nevertheless,  we  may  not  forget  that  elabo- 
rate and  highly  colored  ritual  has  been  found,  as  they  main- 
tain, to  edify,  in  the  case  of  such  men  as  the  saintly  Liddon 
and  his  peers  ;  and  if  so,  you  and  I,  to  whom  it  is  distasteful, 
may  not  say  that  it  cannot  serve  and  does  not  serve  a  high 
spiritual  end.  What  we  have  a  right  to  demand,  I  think,  is 
that  it  shall  not  consist,  in  any  smallest  degree,  in  the  mutila- 
tion of  the  Church's  appointed  Holy  Offices ;  and  that  the 
men  who  are  guilty  of  this  shall  be  regarded,  and  treated, 
as  the  wanton  law-breakers  that  they  are.'' 

The  test  of  ritual,  he  said,  is  its  fruit  in  self-sacrificing 


300  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

service.  "  There  is  no  slightest  difficulty  in  applying  it. 
The  parishes  in  this  land,  in  this  Diocese,  might  without 
much  difficulty  be  divided  into  two  classes,  those  that  are 
noteworthy  for  splendor  and  elaborateness  of  the  material 
details  of  worship,  and  those  that  are  distinguished  by  the 
cheerfulness  and  liberality  with  which  they  bear  the  larger 
burdens  of  the  Church,  in  foreign  lands,  in  western  wilder- 
nesses, in  the  lanes  and  alleys,  the  prisons  and  hospitals  of 
great  cities.  There  are  those  to  whom  religion,  whether 
as  worship  or  as  conduct,  is  a  serious  thing,  and  who  do 
real  work  for  Christ.  There  are  those  to  whom  it  is  a 
dramatic  or  spectacular  thing,  and  to  whom  it  is  no 
more." 

Bishop  Potter  closed  the  Annual  Address  of  1898  with  a 
reference  to  the  peace  propositions  of  the  Emperor  of 
Russia.  The  summons  of  the  nations  to  a  conference  on 
disarmament  found  the  United  States  in  the  intoxication 
of  a  triumph  over  Spain.  "Most  opportune  is  it,  I  think, 
that  in  the  ear  of  a  nation  already  dizzy  with  the  dream  of 
what  it  may  achieve  by  conquests  through  the  force  of 
arms,  there  should  sound  that  strong,  temperate  and  most 
cogently  reasoned  message  which  rings  through  the  ukase 
of  the  Emperor  of  Russia.  It  is  an  unanswerable  indict- 
ment of  the  enormous  folly  and  essential  madness  of  the 
international  race  for  increased  armaments  —  ships  and 
forts  and  men  piled  up  in  ever-increasing  proportions, 
until  at  last  the  utmost  limit  of  a  nation's  resources  in  men 
and  money  has  been  reached,  the  last  man  has  been  dragged 
from  his  family,  the  last  shekel  has  been  borrowed  from  the 
reluctant  creditors,  and  the  empire  or  the  republic  makes 
its  wild  plunge  at  last,  into  irredeemable  bankruptcy." 
"I  hope,"  he  added,  "that  this  Convention  will  not  separate 
without  some  expression  of  sympathy  and  of  admiration 
for  an  act  so  really  noble  and  words  so  greatly  wise.  May 
God  bind  us  together  in  the  spirit  that  seeks  to  understand 
one  another,  to  be  just  to  one  another,  and  to  love  one 
another.  The  old  bitternesses  fade,  thank  God  ;  the  old 


HUMANI  NIHIL  ALIENUM  301 

rancors  are  dying.  Out  of  a  larger  knowledge  has  come  a 
large  charity.  See  to  it,  I  beseech  you,  that  out  of  it  there 
come,  no  less,  a  higher  note  of  purpose  and  a  readier  willing- 
ness for  service  and  for  sacrifice,  to  the  glory  of  God,  and  to 
the  upbuilding  of  his  Kingdom  on  the  earth." 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE   ORDINATION   OF   DR.    BRIGGS 
1899 

IN  the  middle  of  January,  1898,  Bishop  Potter  received  a 
letter  from  Professor  Charles  Augustus  Briggs. 

"Canon  Cheyne  is  to  stay  with  me  the  last  two  days 
before  he  sails  for  Europe.  He  will  be  with  me  on  Monday 
and  Tuesday  next.  Could  you  possibly  come  up  and  dine 
with  us  Monday  or  Tuesday  at  7  P.M.,  or  lunch  at  1  P.M.,  on 
Monday  ? 

"I  am  myself  very  anxious  to  see  you,  and  have  a  talk 
with  you.  I  have  finally  decided  to  retire  from  the  Pres- 
byterian communion,  and  to  do  this  as  soon  as  possible.  I 
would  greatly  prefer  to  unite  with  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
communion,  especially  under  your  jurisdiction,  if  I  can  do 
so  without  undue  humiliation  to  myself  and  those  whom  I 
represent.  I  also  wish  you  to  inform  me  on  some  matters 
where  I  am  not  altogether  clear  in  my  own  mind  as  to  the 
obligations  I  might  be  expected  to  assume. 

"If  you  could  give  me  a  private  interview  in  connection 
with  the  above-mentioned  meeting  with  Canon  Cheyne,  I 
would  be  greatly  pleased.  If  you  cannot,  could  you  make 
an  appointment  for  me  on  Friday  of  this  week,  or  Friday  or 
Saturday  of  the  following  week?" 

Dr.  Briggs  had  been  professor  of  Hebrew  in  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary  in  New  York,  from  1871  to  1891.  In 
the  latter  year  he  was  transferred  to  the  chair  of  Biblical 
Theology.  He  delivered  an  inaugural  address  on  that 
occasion  on  "The  Bible,  the  Church  and  the  Reason." 
The  address  was  made  the  basis  of  a  trial  for  heresy  by  the 

302 


THE   ORDINATION   OF   DR.   BRIGGS  303 

presbytery  of  New  York.  He  was  accused  of  grave  error 
in  asserting  that  the  Church  and  the  Reason  are  each  a 
"fountain  of  divine  authority  which,  apart  from  Holy 
Scripture,  may  and  does  savingly  enlighten  men";  that 
"errors  may  have  existed  in  the  original  text  of  the  Holy 
Scripture"  ;  that  "many  of  the  Old  Testament  predictions 
have  been  reversed  by  history";  that  "Moses  is  not  the 
author  of  the  Pentateuch";  and  that  "Isaiah  is  not  the 
author  of  half  the  book  which  bears  his  name";  and 
that  "the  processes  of  redemption  extend  to  the  world 
to  come." 

The  New  York  presbytery  acquitted  Dr.  Briggs  of  the 
charge  of  heresy,  but  in  1893  the  General  Assembly,  on 
appeal,  suspended  him  from  the  exercise  of  his  ministry. 
The  determining  consideration  appeared  to  be  not  so  much 
the  views  of  the  defendant  as  his  manner  of  expressing 
them.  He  had  an  irritating  way  of  claiming  to  know  more 
than  his  judges,  and  the  offence  was  greatly  magnified  by 
the  fact  that  the  claim  was  valid.  Dr.  Briggs  was  better 
acquainted  with  the  Bible  than  anybody  else  in  the  Pres- 
byterian Church.  If  he  could  have  concealed  his  superior- 
ity, or  mitigated  in  some  way  the  extent  and  thoroughness 
of  his  knowledge,  he  might  still  have  escaped.  But  there 
was  illustrated  in  his  case  the  wise  saying  that  no  man  was 
ever  condemned  for  heresy,  but  only  for  making  himself 
disagreeable. 

The  suspension  of  Dr.  Briggs  made  no  difference  in  his 
standing  in  Union  Seminary,  nor  did  it  lower  him  in  the 
esteem  of  many  intelligent  persons  in  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  but  it  removed  him,  so  long  as  it  continued  in 
force,  from  the  Presbyterian  ministry.  Naturally,  he  looked 
about  for  a  more  congenial  association.  Temperamentally 
orthodox,  and  holding  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  religion 
with  old-fashioned  austerity,  he  sought  a  communion  which 
was  at  the  same  time  conservative  in  theology  and  progres- 
sive in  its  hospitality  to  the  results  of  honest  scholarship. 
This  he  found  in  the  Episcopal  Church. 


304  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

His  letter  to  Bishop  Potter  was  answered  with  a  cordial 
welcome,  and  in  Grace  Church,  on  May  27th,  1898,  he  was 
ordained  deacon. 

His  ordination  to  the  priesthood,  a  year  later,  did  not  pro- 
ceed so  quietly.  The  usual  canonical  examinations  were 
successfully  conducted  ;  the  Standing  Committee  signed  the 
usual  testimonial  of  the  candidate,  and  recommended  him 
to  the  Bishop  "for  admission  to  the  Sacred  Order  of  Priests"  ; 
the  first  signature  to  this  document  was  that  of  Dr.  Morgan 
Dix.  The  time  and  place  of  the  ordination  were  appointed. 
Dr.  Briggs  was  to  be  ordained  in  St.  Peter's  Church,  West 
Chester.  But  the  Rev.  F.  W.  Clendenin,  the  rector  of 
that  Church,  interposed  a  protest. 

"A  few  days,"  he  said,  "after  receiving  your  letter  ad- 
vising me  that  you  proposed  holding  the  ordination  of  Dr. 
Briggs  at  St.  Peter's,  came  a  request  from  some  of  your 
clergy  that  I  should  at  once  read  his  last  book.  This  I 
have  done  with  care  and  deep  regret.  I  feel  as  sure  as  I 
am  of  anything  in  this  world  that  the  book  is  fundamen- 
tally heretical  from  first  to  last. 

"Its  teaching,  if  true,  would  undermine  not  only  the 
whole  Catholic  Church,  Greek,  Roman  and  Anglican,  but 
it  would  destroy  utterly  even  the  faith  and  foundation  of 
Protestantism.  It  leaves  nothing  of  any  form  of  Christian- 
ity, except  that  which  ' scholarship,'  whatever  that  may 
mean,  may  be  pleased  at  last  to  admit.  As  for  the  Bible, 
we  have  no  Bible  except  that  which  'historical  criticism' 
may  be  able  to  dig  out  from  the  'rubbish  of  ecclesiastical 
institutions,  liturgical  formulas,  priestly  ceremonies  and 
casuistic  practices.'  ' 

These  assertions  Dr.  Clendenin  maintained  by  quota- 
tions from  Dr.  Briggs's  "General  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  Holy  Scripture."  For  example,  he  found  it  stated  there 
that  the  "tongues"  of  Pentecost  were  a  form  of  ecstatic 
and  incoherent  speech,  and  that  the  idea  that  the  disciples 
spoke  different  languages  is  "not  only  psychologically  but 
physiologically  impossible."  Dr.  Clendenin  declared  that 


THE    ORDINATION   OF   DR.   BRIGGS  305 

if  St.  Luke  was  mistaken  in  one  point  he  might  have  been 
mistaken  as  to  the  whole  Pentecostal  story ;  in  which  case, 
he  said,  "the  Holy  Ghost  did  not  come  down,  there  is  no 
Catholic  Church,  no  sacrament  has  any  meaning,  and  Dr. 
Briggs'  ordination  itself  would  be  but  an  hour  of  wasted 
life." 

"Why  in  God's  name,"  asked  Dr.  Clendenin,  "does 
such  as  Dr.  Briggs  want  to  come  into  our  Communion? 
Why  does  any  man  want  to  have  him  come?  No  part  of 
the  Catholic  Church  in  her  services  reads  so  much  of  Holy 
Scriptures  as  we  do ;  and  no  part  of  the  Church,  I  believe, 
hears  God's  word  with  greater  reverence.  Dr.  Briggs  does 
not  in  any  fair  and  honest  sense  of  the  word  accept  the 
Bible  as  it  is.  He  discards  the  authority  and  consensus 
of  the  Church.  For  what  reason,  therefore,  on  what 
ground,  does  he  wish  to  come  to  us,  for  we  accept  in  every 
fair,  honest  and  historic  sense  of  the  word,  both  the  Bible 
and  the  consensus  of  the  Church." 

"It  grieves  me,  my  dear  Bishop,"  the  letter  ended,  "to 
add  any  trouble  to  your  already  over-burdened  life,  but  I 
feel  there  is  nothing  left  for  me  but  to  ask  you  to  kindly 
withdraw  the  ordination  from  St.  Peter's  Church.  For 
some  two  hundred  years  this  venerable  parish  has  stood  by 
the  Holy  Scriptures  'as  this  Church  hath  received  the 
same,'  and  I  have  no  right  to  involve  its  record. 

"Lastly,  Right  Reverend  Father  in  God,  until  he  has 
renounced  his  errors,  I  solemnly  protest  against  Charles 
Augustus  Briggs,  Doctor  of  Divinity,  being  ordained  any- 
where, by  you  our  Bishop,  to  the  Priesthood  of  the  Catholic 
Church." 

Immediately  the  air  was  filled  with  clamor.  The  war 
was  on  again  between  the  men  of  the  Old  Learning,  as  they 
were  called  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  and  the  men  of 
the  New. 

Dr.  DaCosta,  not  discouraged  by  the  ill-success  of  his 
presentment  of  Dr.  Newton,  made  out  another  against  Dr. 
Briggs.  "'Public  rumor'  having  accused  the  Rev.  Charles 


306  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Augustus  Briggs,  D.D.  of  teaching  doctrine  contrary  to 
that  held  by  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  I  hereby 
very  respectfully  call  upon  you,  in  accordance  with  Canon 
2,  section  ii,  to  order  an  investigation."  The  pigeonhole 
labelled  "Heresy"  was  already  pretty  full,  but  the  Bishop 
found  room  in  it  for  this. 

Then  letters,  pro  and  con,  began  to  crowd  the  Bishop's 
mail. 

An  anonymous  communication,  having  at  the  top  of  the 
page  the  cryptic  inscription  "Hymenseus  and  Philetus, " 
advised  him  that  if  he  ordained  Dr.  Briggs  he  would  not 
only  commit  perjury  but  would  also  run  a  great  risk  of 
committing  the  Unpardonable  Sin. 

The  Massachusetts  Church  Union,  represented  by  Father 
Benson  and  the  Rev.  C.  T.  Whittemore,  expressed  "the 
profoundest  regret  that  there  should  be  any  thought  of 
ordaining  Dr.  Briggs  to  the  Priesthood  of  the  Church,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  Dr.  Briggs  is  not  only  continuing  to 
exercise  his  office  of  Professor  in  a  schismatical  college, 
but  has  also,  since  his  ordination  to  the  diaconate,  re- 
published  his  critical  views  to  the  disparagement  of  Holy 
Scripture." 

Admiral  Mahan  opposed  the  ordination  on  the  ground 
of  "sanctified  expediency."  Confessing  himself  ignorant 
of  the  subjects  in  which  Dr.  Briggs  was  an  expert,  he  never- 
theless feared  that  his  ordination  "would  affirm  that  his 
conclusions,  publicly  proclaimed,  are  within  the  limits  of 
the  Church's  teaching.  Sanctified  expediency,  as  St.  Paul, 
for  example,  understood  it,  takes  account  of  the  world  as 
it  actually  is.  At  times  public  opinion  must  be  withstood 
at  all  hazards ;  at  other  times  the  avoidance  of  offence 
must  dictate.  It  appears  to  me  that  the  latter  alternative 
applies  here." 

On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Huntington  offered  Grace  Church 
for  the  ordination  service.  "I  have  just  read  in  the  morn- 
ing paper  the  protest  of  the  rector  of  St.  Peter's,  West 
Chester,  against  the  ordination  of  Dr.  Briggs  in  his  Church. 


HENRY  CODMAN  POTTER 
About  ls90 


THE    ORDINATION   OF   DR.   BRIGGS  307 

The  point  of  canon  law  thus  raised  may  be  an  embarrassing 
one  to  you,  and  I  write  for  the  purpose  of  placing  Grace 
Church  at  your  disposal." 

And  Dr.  Cornelius  Smith  was  still  disposed  to  be  sponsor 
for  Dr.  Briggs.  "Having  bought  and  consulted  the  book 
under  discussion,  especially  referring  to  the  pages  indicated 
by  Dr.  Clendenin,  and  having,  moreover,  brought  to  bear 
upon  them  the  general  spirit  of  the  whole  work,  I  find  my- 
self in  the  same  state  of  mind  in  which  I  said  originally  to 
Dr.  Briggs  that  I  should  count  it  an  honor  and  privilege  to 
present  him  to  you  for  advancement  to  the  Priesthood." 

And  Dr.  George  William  Douglas,  who  had  been  asked 
by  the  Bishop  to  preach  the  ordination  sermon,  proceeded 
with  its  composition,  feeling  honored,  as  he  said,  to  have 
a  part  in  such  an  historic  occasion. 

Dr.  Holland  of  St.  Louis  remarked  that  "there  is  not 
an  issue  in  the  Briggs  case  that  has  not  already  been  de- 
cided by  the  highest  ecclesiastical  court  of  England  in 
Briggs's  favor.  You  know  that  if  Briggs  cannot  come  in, 
Gore  and  Driver,  and  the  whole  'Lux  Mundi'  school  of 
ritualists,  and  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  who  defended  its 
right  to  be,  and  the  Church  Union  that  refused  to  condemn 
it,  all  are  heretics  or  connivers  at  heresy." 

Bishop  Potter's  single  statement  in  the  midst  of  the 
discussion  was  made  in  answer  to  a  protesting  layman. 

"My  dear  Sir  —  Your  letter  of  the  5th  inst.  is  before 
me  and  I  have  given  the  matter  to  which  it  refers  my  best 
consideration.  You  exaggerate,  however,  my  powers,  and 
are  in  regard  to  them  under  considerable  misapprehension. 
In  asking  me  to  'refuse  to  ordain  Rev.  Dr.  Briggs/  to  take 
the  responsibility  of  acting  in  the  case,  as  it  demands, 
and  to  'have  the  courage'  of  my  'convictions'  you  are  ap- 
parently under  the  impression  that  my  action  in  the  matter 
is  wholly  within  my  own  discretion. 

"Such  is  not  the  case.  A  Bishop's  powers  are  con- 
stitutional, not  absolute.  In  the  matter  of  ordination  he 
can  only  act  when  certain  preliminary  action  by  others 


308  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

has  been  had,  but  when  this  is  the  case  and  a  candidate 
for  orders  stands  at  the  threshold  of  the  ministry  the  canons 
of  ordination  declare  that  the  Bishop  i shall/  not  'may/ 
then  proceed  to  take  order  for  the  ordination  of  the  person 
who  has  met  the  preliminary  tests  in  the  premises. 

"All  these  tests  have  been  applied  in  the  case  of  the  person 
to  whom  your  letter  refers,  and  I  have  received  a  certificate 
to  that  effect  from  the  Standing  Committee  of  the  diocese. 

"Under  these  circumstances  and  unless  some  charge 
affecting  the  character  or  teachings  of  Rev.  Dr.  Briggs 
which  was  not  covered  by  the  foregoing  testimonial  had 
been  presented  to  me,  I  should  not  consider  myself  as 
having  discretion  to  disregard  the  plain  imperative  of  the 
canon. 

"But  nothing  of  the  sort  has  been  adduced.  The  book, 
the  teachings  of  which  have  lately  been  challenged,  has 
been  for  some  time  before  the  public,  and  the  Standing 
Committee  of  the  diocese  has  been  convened  since  recent 
and  particular  attention  has  been  called  to  it.  It  was,  in 
my  judgment,  competent  to  that  body,  if  it  had  seen  fit 
to  do  so,  to  recall  a  certificate  originally  forwarded  to  me 
on  the  ground  that  it  had  been  signed  under  a  misappre- 
hension or  without  sufficient  knowledge,  but  this  it  has 
not  seen  fit  to  do.  I  must,  therefore,  accept  that  certificate 
as  final,  and  I  shall  do  so. 

"I  beg,  however,  that  you  will  not  suppose  that  I  am 
seeking  to  escape  from  my  personal  responsibility  in  the 
matter  of  the  ordination  of  Dr.  Briggs  by  retiring  behind 
the  action  of  my  constitutional  advisers.  I  have  not  the 
slightest  desire  to  do  so.  The  outcry  against  the  author 
of  'The  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Holy  Scripture/  is 
chiefly  to  be  deplored  because  it  betrays  such  a  lamentable 
ignorance  of  the  progress  of  sound  learning  and  the  judg- 
ment of  the  best  Christian  scholars.  One  of  these,  a  Bishop, 
writes  [to  Dr.  Briggs]  : 

'You  may  be  interested  to  see  that  the  old  staid  Christian 
Knowledge  Society  republished  my  little  pamphlet  on  the 


THE    ORDINATION   OF   DR.   BRIGGS  309 

Bible,  which  contains  the  same  principles  that  are  elaborated 
in  your  treatise. 

"'I  am  indignant  at  the  misrepresentations,  or,  we  will 
hope,  the  misunderstandings,  of  some  of  your  critics.  They 
have  for  the  first  time  come  across  the  interpretation  of 
the  speaking  with  tongues  which  harmonizes  that  book 
[the  Acts]  with  the  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  Have  they 
never  read  Dean  Plumptre's  article  on  the  subject  in  Smith's 
Dictionary  of  the  Bible  ? ' 

"In  a  word,  the  author  of  'The  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  Holy  Scripture'  has  simply  stated  conclusions 
which  the  best  learning  and  the  most  devout  minds  have 
accepted  before  him. 

"I  do  not  myself  accept  all  of  them,  but  that  any  of 
them  denies  or  impugns  any  fundamental  doctrine  of  the 
faith  can  only  be  shown  by  mutilations  or  perversions  of 
what  the  author  has  said,  which  are  as  malignant  as  they 
are  unscrupulous. 

"  I  note  the  prediction  with  which  you  conclude  —  that 
Dr.  Briggs'  advancement  to  the  higher  ministry  for  which 
he  has  been  recommended  will  precipitate  departure  to 
the  Church  of  Rome.  >  This  would  indeed  be  unfortunate, 
for  the  author  of  'The  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Holy 
Scripture'  holds  letters  from  eminent  Roman  Catholic 
scholars  of  foremost  rank  in  institutions  of  learning  of  fore- 
most dignity,  expressing  warmest  appreciation  of  his  con- 
tribution to  the  study  of  the  Bible  and  intimating  their 
purpose  to  make  use  of  it  in  their  class  rooms.  Here  again, 
it  would  seem  that  a  somewhat  larger  knowledge  would  be 
the  safest  guide  to  wise  action.  I  need  hardly  add,  after 
what  I  have  written,  that  it  is  my  intention  to  proceed,  at 
the  time  appointed,  to  Dr.  Briggs'  ordination." 

This  intention  was  duly  fulfilled  on  May  14th,  1899,  in 
the  Pro-Cathedral.  The  little  church,  with  comfortable 
room  for  not  more  than  five  hundred  people,  contained 
about  twice  that  number,  sitting  and  standing.  The 
Bishop  in  reply  to  a  reporter,  before  the  service,  smiled  at 


310  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  thought  of  any  of  the  protesting  clergymen  appearing 
at  the  church  to  demand  a  stay  of  the  proceedings.  There 
was  a  profound,  and  perhaps  an  expectant,  stillness  when 
the  Bishop,  in  the  customary  formula,  invited  any  person 
knowing  "any  impediment"  for  which  the  candidate  "ought 
not  to  be  received  into  this  Holy  Ministry"  to  "come  forth 
in  the  Name  of  God  and  show  what  the  impediment  is"; 
but  no  one  spoke. 

So  Dr.  Briggs  was  ordained.  Dr.  Huntington  thought 
that  after  the  event  there  would  ensue  such  a  period  of 
peace  among  the  brethren  as  is  symbolized  in  the  Revela- 
tion by  the  half-hour  of  silence  after  the  opening  of  the 
seventh  seal.  This  took  place ;  but  only  after  some  last 
thunderings  and  lightnings  of  the  retreating  storm. 

The  Sun,  which  was  at  that  moment  the  stalwart  champion 
of  ancient  orthodoxy,  gravely  disapproved.  The  Journal 
sent  a  telegram  to  every  bishop,  asking  his  opinion  for  the 
edification  of  the  faithful.  Most  of  the  newspapers,  how- 
ever, applauded  the  Bishop.  Indeed,  the  Syracuse  Post- 
Standard  went  so  far  as  to  say,  "Henry  C.  Potter  is  the 
Roosevelt  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York  !" 

Bishop  Nicholson  of  Milwaukee  suggested  that  it  might 
be  possible  to  bring  Bishop  Potter  to  trial.  "He  will  have 
to  answer  to  the  council  of  bishops  for  ordaining  the  man." 

Bishop  Huntington  of  Central  New  York  advised  his 
diocesan  convention  that  "an  unshrinking  attempt  by  any 
ordained  minister  to  fix  terms  of  contempt,  ridicule,  in- 
credulity upon  the  matchless  and  singular  volume  which 
has  declared  itself  through  ages,  without  effectual  dispute, 
to  be  the  Word  of  God,  which  has  been  handled  with  awe 
in  the  highest  seats  of  law  and  courts  of  judgment,  which 
has  been  pressed  with  adoring  gratitude  to  the  breasts  of 
martyrs,  saints,  statesmen  and  seers,  which  has  saturated 
litanies,  missals,  prayer-books,  altar  anthems  and  august 
obsequies  with  its  unearthly  spirit  and  glorified  them  with 
its  grandeur,  could  only  have  been  offensive  by  its  imper- 
tinence and  amazing  by  its  audacity."  "Nothing,"  he 


THE    ORDINATION   OF   DR.    BRIGGS  311 

added,  "can  persuade  me  that  any  Bishop  of  the  Church 
of  God  can  be  compelled  to  lay  ordaining  hands  for  the 
Christian  priesthood  on  any  man  he  deems  unworthy  of 
the  office  and  its  sanctities  —  the  church  continuing  to 
pray  at  the  ember  season  for  all  bishops  that  they  may 
1  faithfully  and  wisely  make  choice  of  fit  persons  to  serve 
in  the  sacred  ministry  of  the  Church." 

But  Dr.  Donald  said  that  "nothing  has  taken  place  in 
the  Church  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  comparable,  in  sig- 
nificance to  its  future,  to  that  which  was  done  yesterday." 

"The  coyotes  howled,"  said  Dr.  Holland,  "and  expected 
a  howl  in  answer,  confident  that  in  a  game  of  howls  coyotes 
could  beat  Rocky  Mountain  lions.  You  unnerved  them 
by  your  silence." 

Professor  Fisher  wrote  from  New  Haven,  "When  Brooks 
was  elected  Bishop  of  Massachusetts  I  telegraphed  him 
that  I  had  never  thought  so  well  before  of  the  '  Historic 
Episcopate.'  I  am  tempted  to  send  the  same  message  to 
you.  Sure  I  am  that  you  have  done  to  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  this  country  one  of  the  greatest  services  that 
could  be  rendered,  and  one  which,  in  the  long  run,  will  be 
seen  to  be  most  conducive  to  its  growth  and  health.  I  am 
greatly  mistaken  if  this  calm  and  just  exercise  of  authority 
on  the  side  of  science  and  reasonable  liberty  can  fail  to 
command  respect." 

Dr.  Hall  Harrison  wrote  to  the  Churchman  that  "the 
outcry  and  panic  over  the  ordination  of  Dr.  Briggs  reminds 
one  whose  memory  can  go  back  thirty  years  of  the  senseless 
opposition  to  the  consecration  of  Dr.  Temple  to  the  see  of 
Exeter  because  he  had  contributed  to  the  famous  volume 
known  as  'Essays  and  Reviews.'  Even  so  great  a  man  as 
Dr.  Pusey  lost  his  balance.  It  is  strange  at  this  day  to 
recall  that  even  such  a  man  as  he  could  go  so  far  as  to  write 
such  words  as  these:  'The  scandal  of  recommending  to  a 
bishopric  one  of  the  writers  of  "Essays  and  Reviews"  sur- 
passes in  its  frightful  enormity  anything  which  has  been 
openly  done  by  any  prime  minister ! '  .  .  .  This  little 


312  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

panic,"  said  Dr.  Harrison,  "will  pass  away  in  like  manner. 
The  Bishop  of  New  York  will  receive  in  time  the  thanks  of 
churchmen  of  all  schools  for  saving  our  American  Church 
from  what  would  have  been  a  sad  blot  on  its  fair  fame. 
Dr.  Briggs  has  brought  to  our  Church  and  the  list  of  its 
clergy  the  name  of  a  learned  Biblical  scholar  and  true 
Christian." 

Dr.  Briggs  himself  said  in  a  letter  to  the  Presiding  Bishop, 
"I  am  assured  by  my  pupils  that  I  make  the  Bible  to  them 
more  real,  more  powerful,  more  divine.  I  have  never  heard 
a  single  one  of  the  thirteen  hundred  theological  students 
I  have  trained  in  the  past  twenty-six  years  who  has  said 
that  I  impaired  his  faith  in  Holy  Scripture.  The  testimony 
is  all  the  other  way." 

There  the  matter  ended.  The  attention  of  controversial- 
ists, journalistic  and  theological,  was  engaged  by  other 
interests.  Dr.  DaCosta,  after  a  time,  went  into  the  Church 
of  Rome,  leaving  behind  him  a  memory  of  zealous  service 
in  the  work  of  the  White  Cross  Society.  Dr.  Clendenin 
returned  to  his  faithful  labors  in  his  ancient  parish.  Dr. 
Briggs  continued  to  the  end  of  his  useful  and  eminent  life 
a  professor  in  Union  Seminary,  a  sound  churchman,  an 
enthusiast  in  the  cause  of  church  unity,  and  a  strong  tower 
of  orthodoxy.  And  Bishop  Potter,  who  supported  Dr. 
Briggs  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  silenced  Dr.  Newton, 
-  as  in  the  earlier  days  of  his  episcopate  he  stopped  the 
ritual  of  Father  Ritchie  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  sup- 
ported Father  Huntington,  —  showed  himself  again  a  just 
administrator,  above  the  strife  of  parties,  intent  solely 
upon  the  advancement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

WHERE   WEST  IS  EAST 
1899-1900 

THE  war  which  was  declared  in  April,  1898,  between  the 
United  States  and  Spain,  and  which  resulted  in  May  in 
the  destruction  of  the  Spanish  fleet  in  the  harbor  of  Manila, 
and  ended  in  August,  brought  a  new  series  of  problems  into 
American  politics.  We  became  possessors  of  colonies  over- 
seas. Not  only  the  Philippines,  by  conquest  and  by  pur- 
chase, but  at  the  same  time,  by  annexation,  the  Hawaiian 
Islands,  became  our  property.  There  was  laid  upon  us 
the  new  task  of  colonial  administration. 

The  accompanying  discussions  divided  our  citizens  into 
imperialists  and  anti-imperialists.  On  the  one  side  were 
those  who  rejoiced  in  the  extension  of  our  national  territory, 
and  believed  that  we  were  thus  increasing  our  importance 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  On  the  other  side  were 
those  who  feared  the  complications  into  which  our  new 
holdings  might  bring  us,  and  who  were  opposed  under  any 
circumstances  to  our  government  of  any  people  against  their 
will.  Their  idea  was  that  the  Philippines  belonged  prop- 
erly not  to  the  Americans  but  to  the  Filipinos. 

Whatever  might  be  the  final  outcome  of  the  discussion, 
whether  to  retain  or  to  relinquish  these  new  possessions, 
it  was  plain  that  they  were  now  ours,  and  that  they  were 
likely  to  continue  for  some  time  under  our  rule.  Accord- 
ingly the  General  Convention,  meeting  in  1898  in  Wash- 
ington, appointed  a  Joint  Commission  on  the  Increased 
Responsibilities  of  the  Church.  Under  these  new  colonial 
conditions,  what  shall  the  Church  do?  The  chairman  of 

313 


314  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  commission  appointed  the  Bishop  of  New  York  as 
travelling  commissioner,  with  the  Rev.  Percy  Stickney 
Grant,  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Ascension  in  that  city, 
as  secretary.  They  were  to  visit  these  island  domains, 
and  to  bring  back  a  report  by  which  the  Church  might  be 
enlightened  and  directed. 

The  choice  of  Bishop  Potter  for  this  errand  was  obviously 
appropriate.  Nobody  else  in  the  Church  had  concerned 
himself  so  notably  and  successfully  with  public  affairs. 
His  address  at  the  Washington  Centennial  had  not  been 
forgotten.  Mr.  James  Bryce,  British  ambassador  to  the 
United  States,  and  wise  observer  of  the  affairs  of  nations, 
had  praised  his  book,  "The  Scholar  and  the  State." 

He  had  particularly  interested  himself  in  the  discussion 
of  the  problem  of  the  Philippines.  Addressing  the  Diocesan 
Convention  of  1898,  he  had  declared  that  "never  was  the 
situation  more  critical  or  the  need  of  our  common  wrork  for 
Christ  more  urgent.  .  .  .  The  nation  has  had  much,  during 
the  past  few  months,  to  blind  and  to  intoxicate  it.  It  has 
won  an  easy  victory  over  an  effete  and  decrepit  adversary, 
in  which  no  splendors  of  individual  heroism,  nor  triumphs 
of  naval  skill  —  and  in  these  we  may  indulge  a  just  pride 
—  ought  to  blind  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we  have  had 
a  very  easy  task  against  a  very  feeble  foe.  And  now,  with 
unexpected  fruits  of  victory  in  our  hands,  what,  men  are 
asking  us,  are  we  going  to  do  with  them?  Nay,  rather, 
the  solemn  question  is,  What  are  they  going  to  do  with 
us?  Upon  what  wild  course  of  so-called  imperialism  are 
they  going  to  launch  a  people,  many  of  whom  are  dizzy 
already  with  the  dream  of  colonial  gains,  and  who  expect 
to  repeat  in  distant  islands  some  such  history  as  our  con- 
quered enemy  wrote  long  ago  in  blood  and  plunder  in  her 
colonies  here  and  in  South  America. 

"At  such  a  time,  as  never  before,  the  Church  of  God  is 
called  upon,  in  the  pulpit  and  by  every  agency  at  her  com- 
mand, to  speak  the  words  of  truth  and  soberness,  and  to 
reason  of  righteousness,  temperance  and  a  judgment  to 


WHERE   WEST  IS  EAST  315 

come  —  a  judgment  for  nations  as  well  as  individuals  — 
till  impetuosity  is  sobered  and  chastened ;  and  until  a 
people  in  peril  of  being  wrecked  upon  an  untried  sea  can 
be  made  to  pause  and  think.  The  things  that  this  com- 
munity and  this  nation  alike  supremely  need  are  not  more 
territory,  more  avenues  of  trade,  more  subject  races  to  prey 
upon,  but  a  dawning  consciousness  of  what,  in  individual 
and  in  national  life,  are  a  people's  indispensable  moral  foun- 
dations —  those  great  spiritual  forces  on  which  alone  men 
and  nations  are  built." 

He  had  said  the  same  in  the  North  American  Review  in 
an  article  in  which  he  declared  that  the  true  ideal  of  a  nation 
is  not  to  be  big  but  to  be  great,  and  that  national  greatness 
is  a  moral  quality. 

Addressing  the  Civitas  Club  in  Brooklyn  (January  llth, 
1899)  he  said,  as  the  New  York  World  afterwards  reminded 
him,  "  By  a  sharp  bargain  that  little  company  of  men  in 
Paris  has  purchased  the  Philippine  Islands  with  their  twelve 
million  souls.  But  any  man  with  intellect  should  be 
ashamed  to  affirm  that  because  we  bought  the  islands  we 
have  possession.  It  is  a  question  if  we  ever  get  possession." 
And  again:  "When  a  nation  forgets  the  sober  promises  it 
has  made,  it  has  struck  the  first  knell  of  its  decay.  We  are 
pledged  by  the  most  solemn  obligations  to  sustain  freedom. 
We  ought  to  go  back  and  wriggle  our  own  necks  into  the 
English  yoke,  and  see  how  we  like  it." 

Speaking  in  Minneapolis,  at  the  Church  Congress  (October 
10,  1899),  he  said,  "It  would  seem  at  least  reasonable 
that  the  conquering  or  purchasing  republic  should  inaugu- 
rate its  relations  to  the  new  possessions  by  some  conference 
with  its  dominant  people.  But  no.  Its  first  word  is  sub- 
jection, its  first  demand  surrender,  its  first,  second  and  third 
conditions  are,  We  will  recognize  nobody,  we  will  treat 
with  nobody,  we  alone  will  dictate  all  the  terms." 

Being  thus  minded,  Bishop  Potter  accepted  the  com- 
mission to  visit  these  oppressed  peoples,  and  late  in  October 
he  embarked  with  Mr.  Grant  from  San  Francisco. 


316  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

In  November,  writing  from  Yokahama,  he  reported  what 
he  had  seen  and  done  at  Honolulu. 

"No  estimate  of  the  present  situation  in  Honolulu  would 
be  of  value,"  he  said,  "which  failed  to  recognize,  first  of 
all,  the  radical  change  in  the  situation  which  has  taken 
place  since,  in  1820,  the  first  Christian  missionaries  went 
out  to  the  Sandwich  Islands.  The  population  of  the  six 
inhabited  islands  of  that  group  is,  now,  only  one  third  of  it, 
native  or  Hawaiian,  and  even  this  proportion  is  rapidly 
diminishing.  The  Japanese  and  Chinese  populations  are 
each  of  them  nearly  as  large  as  that  of  the  natives,  and 
the  foreign  population,  altogether,  including  these  elements 
and  Americans  and  Europeans,  more  than  twice  outnumbers 
the  natives.  Plainly,  there  is  a  large  foreign  missionary 
field,  but,  unlike  that  in  China,  Japan,  or  Africa,  in  no  sense 
homogeneous. 

"Again,  it  is  important  that  it  should  be  recognized  that, 
in  this  heterogeneous  and  polyglot  population,  the  American 
clement  is  distinctly  the  dominant  element  if  not  in  every 
best,  certainly  in  every  potential,  sense.  \Yhatcver  may 
be  true  of  the  circumstances  under  which  the  Hawaiian 
Islands  came  under  our  flag,  it  must  be  owned,  I  think,  by 
the  dispassionate  student  of  their  history  that  they  now 
belong  there.  A\rhen  the  present  government  was  estab- 
lished there,  it  came  in  upon  a  situation  which,  the  pro- 
visional government  preceding  it  had  demonstrated,  was 
manageable  only  by  the  American  capacity,  intelligence 
and  love  of  order,  which  called  that  provisional  govern- 
ment into  existence.  I  mention  these  things  because  they 
have  a  direct  bearing  upon  the  conclusions  which  the  under- 
signed have  reached  in  regard  to  our  duty  in  the  future. 

"That  duty  might  easily  be  evaded,  by  leaving  the  ec- 
clesiastical situation  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  as  it  is.  This 
would  be  certainly,  —  and  not  unnaturally,  —  agreeable 
to  the  present  incumbent  of  the  See  of  Honolulu,  who  has 
resided  there  for  nearly  thirty  years,  and  whose  means  and 
strength  have  been  freely  given  to  the  work  of  the  Church. 


WHERE   WEST   IS  EAST  317 

And  it  may  be  urged  that  the  whole  sphere  of  influence  is 
one  of  relatively  insignificant  consequence  or  importance. 
But  both  these  conclusions  must  rest  upon  a  very  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  facts. 

"And,  first,  it  is  my  duty  to  speak  of  the  former  impres- 
sion, viz. :  that  things,  in  the  Church  in  Honolulu,  'are 
well  enough  as  they  are.'  No  one  can  believe  this  who 
has  looked  at  them  below  the  surface.  The  Church  in 
Honolulu,  and  the  course  of  missions  in  the  Hawaiian  Is- 
lands, have  been  a  rather  painful  illustration  of  maladjust- 
ments. I  knew  the  first  Bishop  of  Honolulu  quite  inti- 
mately ;  and  he  was  my  guest  while  I  was  a  young  rector 
in  the  present  Diocese  of  Albany.  I  should  not  have  be- 
lieved it  easy  for  the  Church  of  England  to  find  another 
man  less  adapted  to  the  task  of  a  Missionary  Bishop  than 
he ;  but  I  think  that,  in  his  successor,  it  has  done  so. 
For  the  fitness  of  a  human  instrument,  in  such  a  case,  does 
not  consist  in  piety  alone,  nor  zeal,  nor  learning,  nor  unselfish 
devotion ;  all  of  which  I  rejoice  to  associate  with  the  two 
occupants  of  the  See  of  Honolulu.  The  task  in  Honolulu, 
from  the  beginning,  has  been  a  delicate  and  difficult  one, 
requiring  wisdom,  patience,  open-minded  sympathy ;  and 
something  wholly  unlike  mental  insularity.  And  until 
these  are  brought  to  it,  it  will  remain  undone.  It  is  this 
that  makes  the  Hawaiian  ecclesiastical  problem,  in  one 
aspect  of  it,  at  any  rate,  distinctly  a  personal  one. 

"Again;  It  may  be  said,  that  whatever  may  be  the 
present  situation  in  and  around  Honolulu,  the  interests 
involved  are  relatively  secondary  and  insignificant.  Second- 
ary, perhaps,  as  compared  with  such  fields,  e.g.  as  China 
and  Japan,  but  surely  not  insignificant.  The  vast  industrial 
interests  already  developed  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  make 
them  of  foremost  importance ;  and  the  fact  that  it  is  Amer- 
ican energy  and  capital  that  are  developing  them,  creates  a 
clear  obligation  on  our  part  to  do  what  we  can  to  redeem 
this  huge  commercialism,  with  its  hordes  of  contract-working- 
men,  from  merely  base  and  sordid  uses.  Still  further  does 


318  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

such  a  work  become  of  preeminent  consequence  when  the 
huge  Japanese  and  Chinese  colonies  in  the  Hawaiian  Is- 
lands are  taken  into  account.  In  these,  our  foreign  mis- 
sionary enterprise  has  surely  an  exceptional  opportunity. 
They  are  destined  to  send  back,  from  time  to  time,  to  their 
mother  countries,  a  very  large  proportion  of  those  that 
have  come  from  them ;  and  meantime,  while  in  our  soil, 
and  living  under  our  institutions,  they  ought  to  be  more 
accessible  than  at  home  to  the  influences  of  our  holy  religion. 
In  this  view  it  is  easily  conceivable  that  the  two  or  three 
greater  Islands  of  the  Hawaiian  group  now  devoted  to  sugar 
culture,  and  employing  large  bodies  of  contract  laborers 
might  be  made  the  training  schools  for  a  native  ministry  of 
priests,  catechists  and  the  like,  of  peculiar  adaptability  and 
consequent  efficiency.  But  such  results  cannot  be  brought 
about  under  present  conditions.  For  reasons  to  which 
more  particularly  I  need  not  refer  here,  the  American  con- 
stituency in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  is  not  in  sympathy  with 
the  Ordinary.  He  is  identified,  in  their  view,  with  efforts  to 
alienate  the  Islands  from  the  American  allegiance,  and 
he  has  never  established  even  the  remotest  contact  with 
Christian  and  humane  enterprises  in  them  which  long 
antedated  his  own.  On  the  other  hand,  the  strength  of 
the  Church  to-day  is  distinctly  American,  and  the  tendency 
towards  it  on  the  part  of  men  of  influence  and  character, 
heretofore  identified  with  other  communions,  is  no  less 
distinct,  and  growing. 

"Under  these  circumstances  the  duty  of  giving  to  this 
part  of  our  Missionary  territory  some  competent  over- 
sight and  administration  seems  very  clear.  While  in 
Honolulu,  I  conferred  with  Bishop  Willis,  the  present 
incumbent  of  the  See,  who  indicated  to  me  the  terms  on 
which  he  was  prepared  to  resign  his  See.  It  is  enough  to 
say  of  them  that  they  were  impracticable  terms,  and  that 
I  gave  him  no  encouragement  to  think  that  they  would  be 
accepted.  Later  in  my  visit,  he  called  upon  me  and  sub- 
mitted a  written  declaration  to  the  same  effect  in  somewhat 


WHERE    WEST    IS   EAST  319 

modified  terms,  and  finally  acquiesced  in  such  changes  in 
this  as  will,  I  think,  when  it  is  communicated  to  the  Presid- 
ing Bishop,  afford  a  basis  sufficient  to  enable  us  to  deal, 
effectively,  with  the  situation.  The  first  step  in  this  will 
be,  I  hope,  to  vest  the  temporary  jurisdiction  of  the  Hawaiian 
Islands  in  the  Bishop  of  California,  who,  I  have  reason  to 
know,  will  be  a  persona  gratissima  to  all  classes  of  church- 
men in  Honolulu ;  and  whose  geographical  proximity,  and, 
still  more,  his  eminent  wisdom,  patience,  and  singleness  of 
purpose,  especially  fit  him  for  such  a  task." 

In  December,  writing  from  Singapore,  he  reported  his 
observations  and  conclusions  in  Manila. 

"On  arriving  at  Hong  Kong  on  Saturday,  Dec.  9,  the 
undersigned  ascertained  that  the  British  steamer  Diamante 
would  sail  on  the  following  Wednesday,  Dec.  13,  for  Manila, 
and  that  there  was  good  reason  to  expect  (an  expectation 
that  later  was  happily  fulfilled)  that  they  might  find  thence 
an  early  and  convenient  steamer  to  this  port.  This  in- 
formation decided  them  to  visit  Manila,  believing,  as  they 
did,  that  it  might  be  in  their  power  to  obtain  informa- 
tion concerning  the  religious  and  ecclesiastical  situation 
there  which  would  be  valuable  to  the  Commission  and 
interesting  to  the  Church.  In  this  they  have  not  been 
disappointed. 

"Arriving  in  Manila  on  Dec.  16,  the  week  that  they 
were  enabled  to  spend  there  was  devoted  unreservedly  to 
seeking  every  opportunity  for  seeing  and  conversing  with 
Filipinos ;  the  officers  and  men  of  the  United  States  army 
and  navy,  especially  our  own  chaplains ;  representatives  of 
the  press  ;  men  of  business ;  and  foreigners  who  have  been 
for  some  years  residents  in  the  Philippines,  from  whom 
information  of  any  sort  could  be  obtained.  In  all  this 
they  have  been  singularly  fortunate,  and  they  desire  here 
to  make  mention  of  the  universal  courtesy  and  large  candor 
with  which  they  have  been  welcomed  and  the  cordial  frank- 
ness of  communication  on  all  hands,  and  especially  of  the 
Governor-General,  Major-Gcneral  Otis,  of  whose  most 


320  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

valuable  information  and  invariable  consideration  they 
desire  to  make  grateful  mention. 

"The  religious  situation  in  the  Philippines  is  such  as 
was  to  be  expected  in  a  colony  of  Spain.  She  has  stamped 
here  ecclesiastical  traditions,  narrow,  intolerant,  and  often 
corrupting,  wherever  she  has  gone,  and  she  has  gone  almost 
everywhere,  among  all  the  various  islands  of  the  archipelago, 
great  and  small.  Worst  of  all,  her  religious  orders,  except 
perhaps  the  Jesuits,  have  robbed  the  people,  wrung  from 
them  their  lands,  and  taxed  the  administration  of  the  sacra- 
ments and  ordinances  of  religion  with  a  scale  of  exactions 
and  impositions  at  once  scandalous  and  outrageous.  No 
marriage,  e.g.,  can  be  celebrated  by  a  priest  of  the  Roman 
obedience,  without  (a)  a  certificate  from  both  parties  of 
baptism ;  (6)  of  confirmation ;  (c)  of  a  confession  to  a 
priest  immediately  preceding  marriage ;  as  well  as  a  certifi- 
cate of  marriage,  all  of  which  must  be  severally  and  sepa- 
rately paid  for,  and  for  which  the  charge  is  in  each  case  from 
$5  to  $8.  It  is  only  necessary  to  visit  the  Philippine  Islands 
to  see,  in  the  obvious  and  extreme  poverty  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  people,  their  utter  inability,  ordinarily,  to  pay 
any  such  charges  ;  which  charges  are  fixed  by  the  archbishop 
who,  it  is  understood,  divides  their  proceeds  with  the  clergy 
who  collect  them.  It  need  not,  therefore,  surprise  any  one 
acquainted  with  the  facts,  that  thousands  of  the  people  are 
living  practically  in  a  state  of  concubinage,  in  which,  to 
their  honor  be  it  said,  men  and  women  maintain,  generally, 
conditions  of  marital  fidelity,  in  and  which,  curiously  enough, 
they  are  not  refused  the  greater  Sacrament. 

"An  ecclesiastical  discipline  which  permits  such  wrongs 
not  unnaturally  permits  others  of  even  larger  proportions. 
One  wonders,  as  he  hears  the  history  of  long-continued 
wrong  and  robberies  by  means  of  which  the  friars  have  dis- 
possessed the  Filipinos  of  their  homes,  seized  their  lands 
and  practically  driven  them  forth,  under  the  pretext  of 
exacting  the  Church's  dues,  whether  those  who  have  done 
these  things  could  ever  have  read  the  burning  language  of 


WHERE   WEST   IS   EAST  321 

the  Hebrew  prophet  addressed  to  men  of  their  type !  It  is 
no  wonder  that  at  last  an  outraged  people  revolted,  and 
that,  having  appealed  in  vain  to  their  own  civil  govern- 
ment for  either  protection  or  redress,  they  should  have 
risen  against  their  oppressors.  As  your  representatives 
are  preparing  these  words  they  have  read  the  summary, 
which  has  only  just  reached  them,  of  the  report  of  the 
American  Commissioners  to  the  Philippines,  and  they  are 
thankful  that  at  least  it  recognizes  the  relation  of  these 
great  wrongs  to  the  situation  which,  when  the  arms  of  the 
United  States  came  to  the  Philippines,  they  found  there. 
If  we  are  to  retain  these  islands,  and  the  undersigned  are 
constrained  to  own,  however  they  may  differ  from  any  of 
their  associates  as  to  the  wisdom  of  originally  entering 
upon  them,  that  no  other  course  seems  for  the  present  open 
to  the  United  States,  these  wrongs  and  the  righting  of 
them  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  whole  Philippine  problem. 
It  will  be  a  colossal  blunder  if  any  delicacy  as  to  the  policy 
which  may  affect  or  offend  a  particular  vote,  important  to 
any  political  party,  is  allowed  to  obscure  the  facts,  or  to 
paralyze  our  action.  We  must  do  justly  in  the  Philippines, 
or  God  will  have  no  use  for  us,  and  our  presence  there  will 
inevitably  redound  to  our  national  dishonor. 

"It  is  a  relief  to  turn  from  this  aspect  of  the  religious 
situation  in  the  Philippines  to  that  other  presented  by  the 
work  of  our  own  representatives  there,  and  to  the  abundant 
tokens  of  their  wisdom  and  success.  As  yet  they  are  few  in 
number,  but,  under  the  most  wise  and  self-sacrificing  leader- 
ship of  the  Rev.  C.  C.  Pierce,  a  chaplain  of  the  United  States 
Army,  they  have  laid  the  foundations  of  a  work  of  singular 
foresight  and  comprehensiveness.  Mr.  Pierce  might  prop- 
erly have  confined  himself  to  his  duties  as  a  regimental 
chaplain ;  but,  from  the  beginning,  he  has  been  the  pastor 
and  servant  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  organizing 
a  congregation  for  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  tempo- 
rarily resident  in  or  near  Manila  ;  another  for  the  Filipinos, 
counselling,  teaching,  baptizing,  ministering  as  a  physician 


322  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

to  their  sick  and  dying,  and  giving,  when  otherwise  it  would 
have  been  impossible  for  them  to  secure,  Christian  burial 
to  their  dead.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  services  of 
this  rare  man,  whose  heroic  and  untiring  ministries  are  a 
crown  of  glory  to  the  Church  whose  son  he  is,  and  who  has 
won  from  his  countrymen  in  Manila,  of  all  ranks  and  call- 
ings, and  from  the  island  people,  to  whom  most  surely 
God  has  sent  him,  universal  love  and  honor. 

"The  undersigned  desire  also  to  make  mention  of  the 
good  work  of  representatives  of  St.  Andrew's  Brotherhood, 
in  whose  rooms  the  first  of  your  signers  met  a  very  interest- 
ing gathering  of  men  and  women,  many  of  the  former  being 
soldiers  in  the  army  of  the  United  States,  in  a  social  and 
informal  way,  where  he  was  permitted  to  take  each  one  of 
them  by  the  hand,  and  later,  briefly,  to  address  them. 
There  is  a  large  place  for  this  work,  but  it,  and  all  other 
work  in  the  Philippines,  should  be  placed  under  the  explicit 
authority  of  Chaplain  Pierce,  whom  experience,  discretion, 
singular  administrative  capacity,  and  kindling  enthusiasm, 
together  with  the  fact  that  he  enjoys  the  unqualified  respect 
and  confidence  of  all  those  in  authority  there,  preeminently 
fit  him  for  quasi-Episcopal  jurisdiction  and  responsibility. 

"Both  the  undersigned,  it  may  be  said,  in  conclusion, 
preached,  in  connection  with  services  for  the  Anglo-American 
congregations,  and  the  first  named  of  them  administered 
the  rite  of  Confirmation  at  a  most  interesting  and  pathetic 
service,  where  a  goodly  number  of  United  States  Soldiers 
and  others  received  the  Laying  on  of  Hands. 

"The  services  are  at  present  held  in  a  building  loaned 
for  the  purpose  by  our  Government,  but  Chaplain  Pierce 
has  already  secured  an  option  upon  an  admirable  site  for  a 
Church  edifice ;  and,  having  been  ordered  by  the  military 
authorities  to  take  a  short  furlough  for  his  health,  some- 
what impaired  by  the  tremendous  strain  which  he  has 
been  so  long  enduring  in  the  Philippines,  will  shortly  visit 
the  United  States  and  seek  the  aid  of  Churchmen  in  secur- 
ing means  for  its  erection.  The  undersigned  invoke  for 


WHERE    WEST    IS   EAST  323 

this  rare  man  the  heartiest  sympathy  and  support  of  the 
commission;  and  from  their  countrymen,  the  help  and 
encouragement  of  every  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  every 
friend  of  righteousness,  justice,  and  a  higher  hope  for  our 
distant  wards  and  brethren." 

These  letters  were  signed  by  Bishop  Potter  and  by  Mr. 
Grant. 

From  India  they  went  to  Egypt,  and  returned  to  New 
York  by  the  way  of  England,  having  encircled  the  globe. 
The  Bishop  wrote  a  little  book  about  his  journey,  and  the 
Century  Company  published  it  (1902)  under  the  title 
"The  East  of  To-day  and  To-morrow."  The  six  chapters 
are  on  "Chinese  Traits  and  Western  Blunders,"  "The 
Problem  of  the  Philippines,"  "Impressions  of  Japan," 
"Impressions  of  India,"  "Impressions  of  the  Hawaiian 
Islands,"  "India:  its  People  and  its  Religion."  The  book 
resembles  the  Bishop's  earlier  volume,  "The  Gates  of  the 
East"  in  that  it  records  his  observations  not  so  much  of 
places  as  of  people.  Mr.  Bryce  said  of  the  addresses  col- 
lected in  "The  Scholar  and  the  State,"  "The  subjects  are 
various,  but  there  is  a  unity  running  through  them  all  which 
springs  from  the  recurrence  of  one  strain  of  thought,  and 
the  discussion,  in  a  great  diversity  of  forms,  of  one  question. 
This  strain  of  thought  and  this  question  are  concerned  with 
the  method  of  applying  Christian  principles  to  the  problems 
of  practical  life."  So  with  the  books  of  travel.  They  re- 
veal the  mind  not  of  a  tourist,  nor  of  a  man  of  letters,  nor 
of  a  student  of  history  or  of  society,  but  of  a  Christian 
minister  who  has  a  profound  conviction  that  the  supreme 
solvent  of  all  problems  is  the  Christian  religion. 

The  Bishop's  change  of  mind  regarding  the  proper  treat- 
ment of  the  Filipinos  scandalized  the  newspapers  which 
were  attacking  President  McKinley's  administration ;  to 
the  anti-imperialists,  it  was  pain  and  grief. 

"We  must  accept  the  inevitable,"  he  said  to  a  reporter 
of  the  World  (March  17th,  1900).  "The  question  now  is 
'  What  are  you  going  to  do  now  that  you  have  got  it  ? '  We 


324  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

have  got  the  responsibility  of  governing  the  Philippines, 
for  better  or  for  worse.  If  it  is  for  the  worse,  all  the  greater 
is  our  responsibility.  ...  I  went  there  in  an  attitude  of 
hostility  to  the  whole  business,  but  that  did  not  prevent 
the  military  authorities  from  extending  every  courtesy  and 
facility  that  would  aid  me  in  comprehending  the  situation. 
I  must  say  that  my  mind  has  greatly  altered  as  to  the  re- 
lation of  the  higher  civilization  to  the  lower  civilization. 
We  have  got  those  islands  and  we  have  got  to  hold  on 
to  them.  It  is  too  late  now  to  get  rid  of  them.  The 
matter  of  their  acquisition  is  now  an  academic  question 
purely." 

At  the  annual  dinner  of  the  New  York  Commandery  of 
the  Military  Order  of  the  Loyal  Legion,  he  said:  "I  am 
bound  to  say  that  I  shall  be  constrained  to  disappoint  a 
great  many  people  who  suppose  that  I  have  undergone  any 
change  in  my  opinions  as  to  the  essential  policy  of  the 
United  States  in  relation  to  that  larger  question  which  lies 
behind  the  acquisition  of  territory  by  the  United  States. 
To  a  persistent  young  woman  who  endeavored  to  have  me 
define  my  attitude  on  the  question  of  expansion,  I  said, 
the  other  night,  Suppose  my  son  were  to  come  to  me  and 
say,  'My  dear  father,  I  am  thinking  of  marrying  a  Creole 
woman  with  seven  children,'  I  am  perfectly  free  to  say  that 
I  should  reply  to  him,  'My  son,  you  are  a  fool.'  But  if 
he  had  actually  married  a  Creole  woman  with  seven  children, 
I  should  try  to  behave  toward  him  as  if  I  still  sustained 
some  blood  relationship  to  him. 

"Now,  in  all  seriousness,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  what 
we  have  done  is  to  establish  some  such  relationship  as  that 
with  the  Filipinos ;  and  I  should  count  it  a  national  morti- 
fication if  to-day  we  should  retreat  from  responsibilities 
because  we  find  them  difficult.  I  have  not  the  smallest 
doubt  that  we  shall  blunder  and  try  again,  and  blunder 
again.  That  is  the  history  of  warfare.  That  is  the  history 
of  a  great  deal  of  the  earliest  story  of  our  Civil  War,  analogies 
of  which  England  is  now  having  in  South  Africa.  But 


WHERE    WEST    IS   EAST  325 

sooner  or  later  the  triumph  of  military  genius  and  of  per- 
sistency will  vindicate  a  great  cause  in  a  great  way. 

"What  the  natives  want  is  the  presence  of  a  disciplinary 
rule,  obedience  to  order,  a  sense  of  authority,  an  intelligent 
command,  and  out  of  that,  just  as  in  the  case  of  India  under 
the  government  of  England,  I  believe  we  shall  see  in  the 
Philippine  Islands,  emerging  from  the  darkness  and  ignorance 
of  the  past,  a  people  with  self-respecting  intelligence,  and 
with  appreciation  of  Western  ideas." 

Preaching  unexpectedly  and  extemporaneously  in  Grace 
Church  —  his  first  sermon  after  his  return  —  he  said  that 
his  views  of  foreign  missions  had  been  radically  changed  as 
a  result  of  his  travels  through  the  empires  of  the  East.  He 
confessed  that  he  had  at  times  been  influenced  by  the  often 
expressed  opinion  that  money  devoted  to  foreign  missions 
was  so  much  money  thrown  away  that  might  have  been  put 
to  good  use  in  furthering  mission  work  at  home.  All  this 
was  driven  from  his  mind  when  he  saw  the  good  work  that 
was  being  done  in  India,  China  and  Japan.  More  good,  he 
declared,  was  being  accomplished  in  proportion  to  the  money 
expended  in  those  countries  of  the  East  than  by  any  other 
agency  in  the  world. 

Thus  the  commissioner  made  his  report  to  the  commission, 
and  the  commission  to  the  General  Convention  which  met 
in  1901  in  San  Francisco,  and  the  Hawaiian  Islands  and  the 
Philippine  Islands  were  made  Missionary  Districts.  Mr. 
Brent  was  immediately  made  bishop  of  the  Philippines  ;  Mr. 
Restarick  was  presently  made  bishop  of  Honolulu. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

TO   MAYOR   VAN   WYCK 
1900 

DURING  his  residence  in  Stanton  street  Bishop  Potter 
had  opportunity  to  see  both  the  good  and  evil  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. He  recognized  the  virtues  of  the  poor.  He  per- 
ceived that  the  inhabitants  of  "mean  streets"  are  not  of 
necessity  mean  people.  He  resented  the  newspaper  idea 
that  in  going  into  that  district  he  was  undertaking  a  mission 
to  the  slums.  But  he  perceived  at  the  same  time  that  the 
righteousness  of  the  poor  was  maintained  in  the  face  of 
manifold  temptations.  He  read  with  a  new  understanding 
the  description  of  the  "ungodly"  in  the  Tenth  Psalm. 
"He  sitteth  lurking  in  the  thievish  corners  of  the  streets, 
and  privily  in  his  lurking  dens  doth  he  murder  the  innocent ; 
his  eyes  are  set  against  the  poor.  For  he  lieth  waiting 
secretly,  even  as  a  lion  lurketh  he  in  his  den,  that  he  may 
ravish  the  poor.  He  doth  ravish  the  poor,  when  he  gctteth 
him  into  his  net.  He  falleth  down  and  humbleth  himself 
that  the  congregation  of  the  poor  may  fall  into  the  hands  of 
his  captains."  It  was  left,  however,  to  the  Rev.  Robert  L. 
Paddock,  now  Bishop  of  Eastern  Oregon,  to  discover  that 
in  New  York  these  "captains"  might  be  police  captains. 

Mr.  Paddock  had  been  acquainted  with  the  Tenth  Ward 
since  the  summer  of  the  Bishop's  visit.  "I  happened  to 
be  boarding  at  the  Settlement,"  he  says,  "studying  the 
housing,  working  and  recreation  conditions,  when  Bishop 
Potter  came  down  to  visit  the  work.  I  shall  never  forget 
the  courage;  it  put  into  the  people,  the  hopefulness  which 
carne  into  their  lives,  as  they  realized  that  this  leader  amongst 


TO   MAYOR   VAN   WYCK  327 

men  was  going  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  dark,  crowded, 
dirty  tenements  and  sweat-shops  where  they  had  been  ap- 
parently condemned  to  suffer  and  die."  When  the  Bishop 
was  looking  for  a  vicar  for  the  pro-cathedral,  he  remembered 
Paddock.  In  May,  1899,  he  brought  him  over  from  Con- 
necticut. 

The  new  vicar  entered  upon  his  work  not  only  with 
spiritual  zeal,  but  with  a  social  enthusiasm  which  was  as 
intelligent  as  it  was  strong.  He  devoted  himself  to  the 
welfare  of  his  people.  In  the  progress  of  his  righteous 
undertakings,  in  the  presence  of  vice  uncommonly  open, 
flagrant  and  menacing,  he  sought  the  cooperation  of  the 
police.  To  his  amazement  and  dismay,  he  was  received 
with  insults.  Not  only  were  his  requests  refused,  but  he 
was  abused  for  making  them.  He  thus  became  concretely 
conscious  of  a  situation  the  existence  of  which  good  citizens 
had  long  suspected.  He  found  that  men  who  were  employed 
by  the  city  to  keep  order,  and  defend  the  right  against  the 
wrong,  were  actually  in  league  with  the  wrong.  They  were 
in  the  pay  of  criminals. 

The  impudence  with  which  these  scoundrels  received  the 
vicar  of  the  pro-cathedral  showed  how  confident  they  were 
in  their  own  safety.  Nobody  could  touch  them.  The 
victims  of  inquity  in  their  districts  had  learned  by  bitter 
experience  that  the  utterance  of  a  word  of  complaint  against 
the  police  would  be  followed  by  the  material  ruin  of  the 
complainant.  They  did  not  dare  to  speak.  Even  the 
protests  of  Mr.  Paddock  would  have  been  met  with  con- 
temptuous silence,  had  he  not  brought  the  matter  to  the 
attention  of  his  brethren. 

In  the  Diocesan  Convention  which  met  in  the  last  week 
of  September,  1900,  Dr.  Huntington  offered  the  following 
resolution:  "Resolved,  that  the  Bishop  of  the  Diocese,  as 
the  head  of  the  Cathedral  body,  be  requested  to  investigate 
the  indignities  alleged  to  have  been  offered  to  the  clergy  of 
the  Pro-Cathedral  by  the  police  authorities  of  the  district 
in  which  said  Pro-Cathedral  is  situate,  and  if  just  case  be 


328  HENRY   CODMAN    POTTER 

found  to  make  formal  protest  in  the  name  of  the  Church  to 
the  Mayor  of  New  York." 

Accordingly,  to  Robert  A.  Van  Wyck,  then  mayor,  Bishop 
Potter  wrote  on  November  loth  as  follows. 

"At  No.  130  Stanton  street,  in  this  city,  there  is  a  work, 
for  the  people  resident  in  that  neighborhood,  of  a  missionary, 
educational  and  social  character,  for  which,  for  some  years, 
I  have  been  directly  and  personally  responsible.  Its  in- 
fluence for  good  order  and  good  morals,  to  describe  it  in  no 
other  way,  has  been  considerable ;  and  has  been  recognized, 
I  think  I  may  venture  to  say,  by  those  who  know  it,  as  of 
real  and  enduring  value.  It  is  not  only  a  centre  for  the 
ministrations  of  religion,  but  also  for  training  in  various  arts 
and  handicrafts,  for  a  free  library,  gymnasium,  cooking, 
sewing,  and  other  schools,  etc.,  etc. ;  and  as  such,  for  those 
whose  lives  are  often  hard  and  narrow,  and  wrhose  pleasures 
and  privileges  are  few,  it  has  been  recognized  as  an  important 
factor  in  promoting  the  virtue  and  good  order  of  the  com- 
munities to  which  it  ministers. 

"In  view  of  these  facts,  it  would  seem  that  it  has  a  valid 
claim  upon  the  sympathy,  cooperation,  and  at  least  courteous 
consideration  of  those  who  officially  represent  our  city  gov- 
ernment and  the  guardianship  of  decency  and  good  morals. 
I  urge  here  no  other  claim  for  it,  and  I  beg  to  say  that  I  am 
not  now  addressing  you  because  there  has  been  in  that  which 
I  now  desire  to  bring  to  your  notice  a  vulgar  and  brutal  ab- 
sence of  those  qualities  in  connection  with  one  who  happens 
to  have  been  my  own  representative.  The  personal  element, 
so  far  as  he  is  or  I  am  concerned,  is  of  the  very  smallest 
consequence. 

"But  the  thing  that  is  of  consequence,  sir,  is  that  when  a 
minister  of  religion,  and  a  resident  in  a  particular  neighbor- 
hood, whose  calling,  character,  experience  and  truthfulness 
are  all  alike  widely  and  abundantly  recognized,  goes  to  the 
headquarters  of  the  police  in  his  district  to  appeal  to  them 
for  the  protection  of  the  young,  the  innocent  and  the  de- 
fenceless against  the  leprous  harpies  who  are  hired  as  runners 


TO   MAYOR  VAN   WYCK  329 

and  touters  for  the  lowest  and  most  infamous  dens  of  vice, 
he  is  met  not  only  with  contempt  and  derision,  but  with  the 
coarsest  insult  and  obloquy. 

"You  will  say  that  these  are  strong  words.  I  hold  myself 
ready  at  any  time  to  submit  the  facts  that  substantiate  them. 
The  statement  now  in  my  possession  of  two  clergymen  of  the 
highest  character  contains  the  testimony  of  two  men,  given 
without  exaggeration,  with  the  most  painstaking  reserve, 
and  with  absolute  truthfulness.  In  substance  it  is  briefly 
this :  that  when  one  of  them  complained  to  a  police  captain 
of  a  condition  of  things  in  his  immediate  neighborhood, 
whose  preeminent  infamy  is  a  matter  of  common  notoriety, 
a  condition  of  things  easily  verified  by  any  intelligent  citizen 
who  passes  through  the  streets  in  which  it  exists,  he  was 
told  that  he  lied ;  and  that  when,  disheartened  by  such  an 
experience,  he  carried  his  complaint  to  a  higher  authority 
in  the  police  force  he  was  met  with  insolent  derision. 

"I  affirm  that  such  virtual  safeguarding  of  vice  in  the 
city  of  New  York  is  a  burning  shame  to  any  decent  and 
civilized  community,  and  an  intolerable  outrage  upon  those 
whom  it  especially  and  preeminently  concerns.  I  am  not, 
I  beg  to  say,  unmindful  of  the  fact  that  the  existence  of 
vice  in  a  great  city  is,  practically,  an  inevitable  condition  of 
the  life  of  such  a  community.  I  am  not  demanding  that 
vice  shall  be  ' stamped  out'  by  the  police  or  any  other 
civil  authority.  That  is  a  task  which  would  demand  for 
its  achievement  a  race  of  angels  and  not  of  men.  But  I 
approach  you,  sir,  to  protest,  with  all  my  power  against  a 
condition  of  things  in  which  vice  is  not  only  tolerated,  but 
shielded  and  encouraged  by  those  whose  sworn  duty  it  is 
to  repress  and  discourage  it,  and,  in  the  name  of  unsullied 
youth  and  innocence,  of  young  girls  and  their  mothers  who, 
though  living  under  conditions  often  of  privation  and  the 
hard  struggle  for  a  livelihood,  have  in  them  every  instinct 
of  virtue  and  purity  that  are  the  ornaments  of  any  so-called 
gentlewoman  in  the  land.  I  know  those  of  whom  I  speak ; 
their  homes,  their  lives,  their  toil,  and  their  aspirations. 


330  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Their  sensibility  to  insult  or  outrage  is  as  keen  as  theirs 
who  are  in  your  household  or  mine ;  and  before  God  and  in 
the  face  of  the  citizens  of  New  York  I  protest,  as  my  people 
have  charged  me  to  do;  against  the  habitual  insult,  the  per- 
sistent menace,  the  unutterably  defiling  contacts,  to  which, 
day  by  day,  because  of  the  base  complicity  of  the  police  of 
New  York  with  the  lowest  forms  of  vice  and  crime,  they  are 
subjected.  And,  in  the  name  of  these  little  ones,  these  weak 
and  defenceless  ones,  Christian  and  Hebrew  alike,  of  many 
races  and  tongues,  but  of  homes  in  which  God  is  feared  and 
His  law  reverenced,  and  virtue  and  decency  honored  and 
exemplified,  I  call  upon  you,  sir,  to  save  these  people  who 
are  in  a  very  real  way  committed  to  your  charge,  from  a 
living  hell,  leprous,  deadly,  damning,  to  which  the  criminal 
supineness  of  the  constituted  authorities,  set  for  the  defence 
of  decency  and  good  order,  threatens  to  doom  them. 

"I  have  no  methods  to  suggest,  no  individuals  to  single 
out  for  especial  rebuke  and  chastisement.  These  are  for 
you  to  determine  and  to  deal  wTith.  The  situation  which 
confronts  us  in  this  metropolis  of  America  is  one  of  common 
and  open  notoriety,  and  of  such  a  nature  as  may  well  make 
us  a  byword  and  hissing  among  the  nations  of  the  world. 
For  nowhere  else  on  earth,  I  verily  believe,  certainly  not  in 
any  civilized  or  Christian  community,  does  there  exist  such 
a  situation  as  defiles  and  dishonors  New  York  to-day. 
Vice  exists  in  many  cities ;  but  there  is  at  least  some  per- 
sistent repression  of  its  external  manifestations,  and  the 
agents  of  the  law  are  not,  as  here,  widely  believed  to  be 
battening  upon  the  fruits  of  its  most  loathsome  and  un- 
namable  forms. 

"I  come  to  you,  sir,  with  this  protest  in  accordance  with 
the  instructions  lately  laid  upon  me  by  the  convention  of 
the  Episcopal  Church  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York.  The 
events  which  provoked  its  action  occurred  some  months 
ago.  There  has  been  no  haste  on  my  part,  or  on  theirs 
in  behalf  of  whom  I  speak,  in  reaching  conclusions  as  to 
the  situation  to  which  I  refer.  Months  have  passed  since 


TO  MAYOR  VAN   WYCK  331 

the  incidents  occurred  to  which  I  have  alluded  in  this 
communication.  But,  in  all  these  months,  the  condition 
of  things  in  whole  neighborhoods  has  not  improved,  but 
rather  grown  worse.  Vice  not  only  flaunts  in  the  most 
open  ribald  forms,  but  hard-working  fathers  and  mothers 
find  it  harder  than  ever,  to-day,  to  defend  their  households 
from  a  rapacious  licentiousness  which  stops  at  no  outrage 
and  spares  no  tenderest  victim.  Such  a  state  of  things 
cries  to  God  for  vengeance,  and  calls  no  less  loudly  to  you 
and  me  for  redress. 

"This,  sir,  is  my  case.  I  leave  it  confidently  in  your 
hands.  Confidently,  I  say,  because  I  cannot  believe  that 
you  will  fail  to  recognize  in  it  a  great  duty,  a  duty  which 
you  will  set  yourself  to  discharge,  no  matter  how  great  the 
cost.  I  do  not  forget  what  has  come  to  be  too  often  ex- 
pected in  our  day  from  those  who  hold  office  when  those 
who  are  their  partisan  associates  are  involved  in  wrong- 
doing. But  I  cannot  believe  that,  in  such  a  case  as  this, 
you  will  hesitate  as  to  your  duty,  no  matter  where  the  doing 
of  it  may  compel  you  to  strike.  Great  place  such  as  yours 
demands  great  courage  and  great  sacrifice.  Great  crises 
such  as  that  which  has  now  come  in  the  history  of  our  city, 
and  I  think  I  may  be  forgiven  if  I  add,  in  your  own  career, 
demand  great  acts.  I  cannot  believe  that  you  will  disdain 
an  opportunity  so  unique  as  that  which  now  confronts  you 
for  action  worthy  of  your  office,  your  citizenship,  your 
manhood." 

Immediately  upon  the  receipt  of  this  letter,  the  Mayor 
wrote  to  the  Police  Commissioners  : 

"I  transmit  to  you  herewith  a  communication  this  day 
received  by  me  from  the  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter,  Bishop 
of  New  York. 

"I  call  your  attention  to  the  statements  in  this  letter 
relative  to  the  conduct  of  two  members  of  the  police  force 
toward  citizens  who  called  on  them  for  official  aid  and 
assistance.  An  officer  who  insults  a  citizen  is  a  disgrace  to 
the  service.  You  will  immediately  make  a  searching  ex- 


332  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

animation,  and  you  will  see  to  it  that  an  offence  so  utterly 
disgraceful  and  outrageous  is  adequately  punished. 

"I  also  call  your  attention  to  what  the  bishop  says  as  to 
the  open  and  public  violations  of  law  and  decency  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  pro-cathedral  in  Stanton  street.  You 
will,  at  once,  take  such  steps  as  shall  secure  to  him,  and  to 
all  working  to  the  same  end,  the  cooperation  and  assistance 
of  yourselves  and  your  subordinates,  to  the  fullest  extent 
of  your  authority.  This  matter  must  receive  your  active 
and  vigorous  effort,  and  you  must  at  once  take  such  official 
action  as  will  do  away  with  the  conditions  of  which  the 
bishop  complains. 

"I  wish  it  distinctly  understood  that  to  this  end  I  shall 
use  to  the  utmost  limit  all  the  power  vested  in  me,  and 
that  I  shall  hold  to  personal  responsibility  those  who  fail 
to  exert  themselves  in  like  manner." 

To  the  Bishop  he  said  : 

"I  wish  here  to  assure  you  that  I  will  exert  every  power 
which  the  law  has  given  me  to  right  the  wrongs  and  do 
away  with  the  conditions  of  which  you  complain,  and  to 
secure  a  hearty  and  efficient  cooperation  by  the  Police 
Department  with  all  who  arc  working  to  do  away  with 
public  violations  of  law  and  decency. 

"I  stand  ready  at  all  times  to  assist  and  cooperate  with 
you  in  this  matter." 

The  President  of  the  Police  Board  wrote  to  the  Bishop  : 

"The  first  knowledge  that  any  member  of  the  police 
board  had  of  this  alleged  insult,"  he  said,  "was  conveyed 
in  the  public  prints  of  Sept.  28,  which  reported  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  Episcopal  convention,  having  reference  to  this 
subject-matter.  The  resolution  adopted  by  such  conven- 
tion called  for  an  investigation  by  you  and,  if  the  facts 
justified  it,  the  presentation  of  a  suitable  communication 
to  the  mayor.  In  view  of  this  resolution  the  police  board 
has  waited  the  result  of  your  investigation  and  such  action 
as  you  should  deem  necessary. 

"The  receipt   of    your   communication   from   the  mayor 


TO   MAYOR   VAN   WYCK  333 

places  the  matter  now  before  the  board  for  its  action,  and 
to  the  end  that  proper  charges  may  be  formulated  against 
the  officers  complained  of,  the  preparation  of  which  neces- 
sarily required  a  specific  statement  of  the  dates  and  times 
of  the  alleged  offense  and  the  persons  against  whom  the 
offense  was  committed,  I  respectfully  request  that  you 
cause  to  be  submitted  to  me  for  the  use  of  the  police  board 
the  name  of  the  person  or  persons  against  whom  the  offense 
was  committed,  dates  or  date  of  its  occurrence  and  the 
language  used  as  nearly  as  may  be. 

"Upon  the  receipt  of  such  information  charges  will  be 
formulated  and  preferred  against  these  officers  who  may 
be  named.  The  practice  of  the  police  board  has  been  to 
permit  the  appearance  of  counsel  for  the  parties  making 
complaints  on  the  trial  had  against  a  member  of  the  force. 
In  this  case,  however,  there  is  no  desire  that  the  complaint 
should  be  made  by  the  party  to  whom  the  alleged  insult 
was  given,  the  police  board  preferring  the  charge.  It  will, 
however,  permit  and  it  most  earnestly  requests  that  you 
designate  some  counselor  at  law  who  will  represent  you  in 
the  prosecution  of  this  complaint,  and  if  in  his  judgment 
it  is  deemed  best  the  form  of  complaint  may  be  drafted  by 
such  counsel. 

"In  reference  to  the  statements  contained  in  your  com- 
munication as  to  open  and  public  violation  of  law  and  dis- 
cipline in  the  neighborhood  of  the  pro-cathedral  the  board 
has  taken  action  thereon." 

Even  Mr.  Richard  Croker,  who  was  supposed,  as  the 
master  of  Tammany,  to  be  the  actual  ruler  of  the  city,  was 
aroused  to  action.  He  told  reporters  that  he  had  already 
instructed  the  District  Attorney  to  "let  no  guilty  politician 
escape."  "Any  man,"  he  said,  "whether  in  Tammany 
Hall  or  not,  who  is  engaged  in  traffic  of  that  kind,  should 
be  politically  and  socially  ostracized.  He  is  a  contemptible 
scoundrel,  and  no  name  is  hard  enough  to  fit  him." 

Not  only  the  city  but  the  country  read  the  Bishop's  letter. 
Every  newspaper  in  every  important  town  had  an  editorial 


334  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

about  it.  Again,  as  at  the  Washington  Centennial,  Bishop 
Potter  had  spoken  the  mind  of  all  good  citizens.  These 
two  utterances,  the  sermon  and  the  letter,  mark  the  two 
high  points  in  his  political  service. 

The  admirers,  however,  who  by  reason  of  these  events 
spoke  of  him  as  an  " ecclesiastical  statesman,"  used  the 
adjective  in  a  sense  other  than  that  in  which  it  was  applied 
to  mediaeval  bishops.  The  ecclesiastical  statesman,  in  that 
sense,  is  occupied  with  ecclesiastical  affairs.  He  is  doing 
in  the  Church  that  which  his  secular  neighbor  is  doing  in 
the  State.  If  he  is  a  politician,  he  is  setting  forward  the 
interests  of  his  church  party ;  if  he  is  a  statesman,  he  is 
advancing  the  interests  of  the  general  church.  In  either 
case  he  represents  a  religious  organization,  in  whose  councils 
he  is  an  eminent  and  influential  person.  He  has  about  him 
an  intimate  circle  of  friends,  companions  and  disciples,  and 
he  and  they  shape  legislation.  Nothing  can  get  through 
the  General  Assembly  or  the  General  Convention  without 
his  approval. 

Bishop  Potter  was  not  an  ecclesiastical  statesman  of 
that  kind.  His  position  for  many  years  as  secretary  of 
the  House  of  Bishops  kept  him  out  of  the  House  of  Deputies. 
^Tien  he  became  a  bishop,  the  closed  doors  behind  wrhich 
the  bishops  conduct  their  business  prevented  the  people 
from  hearing  what  he  said.  He  desired  to  have  the  doors 
opened,  and  voted  on  that  side  in  the  debate  which  arose 
at  every  triennial  session,  but  without  effect.  It  was 
understood,  however,  that  he  was  not  an  especially  notable 
leader  in  the  discussions  of  the  brethren.  His  clear  mind 
and  his  instinct  for  order  enabled  him,  indeed,  to  be  useful, 
on  occasion,  in  the  disentanglement  of  the  twisted  skein  of 
parliamentary  procedure.  It  is  said  that  one  time,  in  his 
secretarial  days,  when  several  bishops  had  tried  in  vain  to 
untie  the  hard  knot  of  debate,  and  Bishop  Benjamin  Bos- 
worth  Smith  was  endeavoring  in  his  turn  to  get  it  straight, 
Henry  Potter  wrote  on  a  slip  of  paper  and  handed  to  his 
neighbor  the  words,  "Genesis  43  :  31,"  which  being  consulted 


TO   MAYOR  VAN   WYCK  335 

was  found  to  read,  "But  Benjamin's  mess  was  five  times  so 
much  as  any  of  theirs."  Some  doubt  is  cast  upon  the  story 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  told  in  England  in  reference  to  Benja- 
min Jowett.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  it  was  to  Bishop 
Potter  that  Bishop  Brooks  whispered,  in  the  course  of  his 
first  session  with  the  House  of  Bishops,  "Henry,  is  it  always 
dull  as  this  ?  "  sure  of  Potter's  sympathy. 

Bishop  Potter's  interests  were  not  ecclesiastical  but  re- 
ligious. His  supreme  desire  was  to  make  the  Church  in- 
creasingly effective  in  bringing  about  the  betterment  of 
society.  He  believed  with  all  his  heart,  and  said  in  public 
on  a  hundred  occasions,  that  social  betterment  cannot  be 
accomplished  by  better  laws,  or  better  enforcement  of 
them  by  the  police,  by  better  houses  or  by  better  wages, 
but  by  the  spirit  of  God  speaking  to  the  soul  of  man.  The 
one  essential  human  need  is  the  need  of  religion.  He  con- 
ceived it  to  be  the  business  of  his  life  to  bring  religion  to 
bear  upon  all  human  affairs.  He  was  the  accepted  spokes- 
man of  the  Christian  ministry  of  New  York  because  he 
could  be  trusted,  above  all  men,  at  every  public  meeting, 
to  do  that  thing. 

At  the  same  time  he  had  a  clear  conviction  as  to  the 
limits  of  ministerial  responsibility.  He  believed  that  the 
function  of  the  Church  is  to  inspire  men  to  social  action, 
but  not  to  direct  them. 

He  preached  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel,  a  week  after  the  pub- 
lication of  his  letter  to  the  Mayor. 

"If  you  and  I  could  go  up  to  any  very  great  height  in 
New  York  to-day  we  might  look  down,  as  Christ  did  upon 
Jerusalem  years  ago,  and  see  the  beautiful  structures  of 
architecture,  the  great  number  of  stores  and  dwellings, 
the  men  and  women  going  about  their  daily  vocations,  and 
everything  that  goes  to  make  up  the  business  and  social  life 
of  a  great  city.  But  we  might  see  more.  We  could  see  the 
homes  of  men  and  women,  the  shames  and  infamies,  the 
secret  crimes  and  monster  passions,  the  hatred  and  cruel- 
ties of  men,  and  what  monstrosities  are  there  protected. 


336  HENRY   CODMAN  POTTER 

"Nobody  who  has  any  realization  of  this  great  and  grave 
situation  will  fail  to  discharge  his  or  her  obligations.  Some- 
where you  men  and  women  have  a  place  in  this  movement. 
Find  that  place,  and  then  with  the  strength  of  God  keep 
your  shoulder  to  the  wheel.  First  organize.  New  York 
will  not  be  redeemed  by  emotion,  by  denunciation,  or  by 
turning  your  back  upon  it.  There  is  a  burning  need  of  the 
redemption  of  the  city  whose  sons  we  are.  There  are 
different  religions,  different  nationalities  and  different  asso- 
ciations, but  we  must  forget  them. 

"If  we  could  find  three  or  five  men  whom  we  all  could 
trust  and  believe  in  —  and  there  arc  hundreds  of  them  — 
and  say  to  them,  'What  do  you  want  us  to  do?'  we  would 
trust  in  their  judgment  and  follow  their  lead,  and  half  of 
this  great  work  would  be  done. 

"We  need  not  only  vigilance  but  persistence.  First  of 
all,  offer  up  a  prayer  to  God.  He  will  open  your  eyes,  and 
by  the  power  of  His  Son  will  kindle  a  flame  of  righteous 
indignation  in  your  hearts,  and  keep  it  burning  with  a  firm 
endurance,  until  these  great  crimes  are  blotted  out  and 
New  York  is  purified." 

But  he  declined  to  attend  a  meeting  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  to  plan  a  campaign  against  the  police  protection 
of  vice,  or  to  be  a  leader  in  a  movement  to  enlist  in  such  a 
campaign  the  churches  of  New  York. 

"In  such  an  effort,"  he  said,  "an  ecclesiastic  is  not  the 
best  instrument.  His  particular  affiliations  make  him  dis- 
tinctly not  a  persona  grata  to  priests  and  ministers  (and 
sometimes  people)  of  other  communions,  with  whom  a 
certain  odium  theologicum  is  still  a  very  active  sentiment. 
The  clergy  may  fitly  exercise  the  prophetic  office  of  rousing, 
warning,  entreating ;  but  in  social  and  political  movements 
their  best  service  will  be  in  the  ranks,  where,  as  in  times  of 
stress  and  siege  they  may  patrol,  mount  guard,  keep  watch, 
but  leave  to  others  the  task  of  generalship. 

"As  to  this,  in  the  present  emergency,  I  am  quite  clear. 
New  York  wants  a  strong  committee  of  three  or  five  trusted 


TO  MAYOR  VAN   WYCK  337 

laymen,  to  coordinate  forces,  sentiment  and  purpose ;  and 
then,  if  we  can  maintain  the  present  awakened  sense  of 
danger,  the  rest  will  almost  accomplish  itself." 

He  presented  the  matter  to  the  Diocesan  Convention 
(1901).  "A  corrupt  system,  whose  infamous  details  have 
since  been  steadily  uncovered  to  our  increasing  horror  and 
humiliation,  was  brazenly  ignored  by  those  who  were  fatten- 
ing on  its  spoils,  and  the  world  was  presented  with  the 
astounding  spectacle  of  a  great  municipality  whose  civic 
mechanism  was  largely  employed  in  trading  in  the  bodies 
and  souls  of  the  innocent  and  defenceless.  What  has  been 
published  in  this  connection  is  but  the  merest  hint  of  what 
exists  —  and  exists,  most  appalling  of  all,  as  the  evidence 
has  come  to  me  under  the  seal  of  confidence,  in  overwhelm- 
ing volume  and  force  to  demonstrate  —  under  a  system  of 
terrorism  which  compels  its  victims  to  recognize  that  to 
denounce  it  means  the  utter  ruin,  so  far  as  all  their  worldly 
interests  are  concerned,  of  those  who  dare  to  do  so.  This 
infamous  organization  for  making  merchandise  of  the  cor- 
ruption of  girls  and  boys,  and  defenceless  men  and  women, 
has  adroitly  sought  to  obscure  a  situation  concerning  which 
all  honest  people  are  entirely  clear  by  saying  that  vice 
cannot  be  wholly  suppressed.  Nobody  has  made  upon 
the  authorities  of  New  York  any  such  grotesque  demand. 
All  that  our  citizens  have  asked  is  that  the  government  of 
the  city  shall  not  be  employed  to  protect  a  trade  in  vice, 
which  is  carried  on  for  the  benefit  of  a  political  organization. 
The  case  is  entirely  clear.  No  Mephistophelian  cunning 
can  obscure  it,  and  I  thank  God  there  is  abundant  evidence 
that  the  end  of  such  a  condition  of  things  is  not  far  off. 
The  police  force  of  this  city,  only  partially  tainted,  I  rejoice 
to  believe,  has  come  to  abhor  the  situation  and  their  own 
slavery  far  more  widely  than  is  suspected ;  and  the  people, 
—  those  who  dwell  in  the  homes  and  make  up  the  house- 
holds which  this  infamy  most  of  all  invades  —  are  not 
deceived  by  the  attempts  that  are  made  to  palliate  or 
excuse  it,  but  rather  determined  that  it  shall  come  to  an 


338  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

end.  Whether  their  cry  and  prayer  for  help  shall  be  an- 
swered, will  depend  largely  upon  the  answer  which  we 
here,  and  those  whom  we  represent,  shall  make  to  it.  The 
classes  that  call  themselves  educated  and  refined,  the  pos- 
sessors of  wealth  and  influence,  gentlewomen  whose  moral 
standards,  high  as  they  are,  are  no  higher  than  those  of 
their  less  privileged  sisters,  the  clergy  and  their  people, 
all  alike,  must  bear  a  hand  here,  and  arise  and  strive  for 
God,  and  our  city's  honor.  We  face  a  great  crisis.  May 
the  Master  whom  we  profess  to  serve  enable  us  worthily 
to  meet  it!" 

They  did  meet  it.  The  citizens  whom  the  bishop's  letter 
had  informed,  and  to  whose  consciences  it  had  appealed, 
were  urged  by  Dr.  Howard  Crosby's  influential  organiza- 
tion for  the  repression  of  vice,  and  marshalled  by  the  Citizens 
Union.  They  rose  up  at  the  jiext  election  and  turned 
Tammany  out. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

COMPLETING  TWENTY  YEARS 
1901-1903 

ON  June  29,  1901,  Bishop  Potter  spoke  in  the  chapel  of 
the  General  Theological  Seminary  at  a  service  held  to 
celebrate  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  ordination  of  five 
clergymen  of  New  York.  After  the  service  he  acted  as 
toastmaster  at  dinner  in  the  refectory,  having  before  him 
five  loving-cups  which  he  presented  with  appropriate  re- 
marks. Hardly  had  these  pleasant  ceremonies  been  con- 
cluded when  he  was  hastily  summoned  to  the  sick  chamber 
of  his  wife. 

Mrs.  Potter  had  not  been  in  good  health  for  some  time, 
but  no  marked  change  had  appeared  in  her  condition.  A 
few  days  before,  she  had  returned  from  Newport  ill,  but 
there  seemed  to  be  no  reason  for  serious  apprehension. 
She  suddenly  became  alarmingly  worse,  and  that  night  died. 

It  was  no  longer  the  custom,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Bishop's 
father,  to  publish  affectionate  appreciations  of  the  departed 
members  of  one's  family.  Bishop  Potter  endured  his  grief 
in  silence.  A  friend,  however,  wrote  in  the  Churchman  a 
little  obituary  notice.  Mrs.  Potter,  she  said,  "made  no 
compromise  with  truth."  She  drew  a  clear  line  between 
what  she  considered  to  be  right  and  what  she  considered  to 
be  wrong,  and  permitted  no  trespassing  across  it.  She 
saw  black  as  black,  and  white  as  white.  She  had  no  patience 
with  moral  indifference  or  indefmiteness.  "Friendship  to 
her  was  sacred,  sacramental,  eternal."  She  was  unfailingly, 
and  sometimes  unsparingly,  loyal.  She  helped  and  inspired 
her  friends  by  the  wit  and  charm  of  her  conversation,  and 

339 


340  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

by  the  rapid  and  judicious  reading  whose  discoveries  and 
treasures  she  shared  with  them,  but  chiefly  by  her  faith  in 
their  great  possibilities  and  the  fidelity  with  which  she  held 
them  to  their  ideals. 

A  son  and  five  daughters  survived  her. 

The  Bishop  spent  the  summer  in  the  Adirondacks.  In 
August;  the  Amalgamated  Association  of  Iron,  Steel  and 
Tin  Workers  began  a  strike  against  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  which  threatened  to  be  a  national  disaster. 
Ten  days  after  the  beginning  of  the  strike  the  Bishop  re- 
plied to  a  letter  from  Mr.  W.  R.  Hearst,  editor  of  the  New 
York  American  and  Journal. 

"It  would  take  a  volume,"  the  Bishop  said,  "to  answer 
the  long  list  of  questions  which  the  present  labor  situation 
has  brought  forth.  ...  I  confess  the  gravest  question 
seems  to  me  to  be,  How  can  workingmen  and  employers  be 
helped  to  a  better  understanding  of  their  mutual  interests,  and, 
indeed,  even  before  that,  of  the  fact  that  their  interests  are 
mutual  ? 

"There  is  something  infinitely  pathetic  in  the  effort  of 
Mr.  Shaffer  and  his  confreres  to  'play  polities'  in  outwitting 
the  corporations.  It  is  all  so  futile  and  mischievous.  In- 
stead of  encouraging  it,  and  lending  itself  (as  it  is  constantly 
doing)  to  inflame  class  hatreds,  would  it  not  be  worth  while 
for  the  press  to  try  and  educate  the  ignorant  to  some  in- 
telligent understanding  of  social  problems  ?  What  is  wanted 
is  a  symposium  of  clever  men  discussing  the  question  of  wages, 
common  ownership  of  plants  and  land  —  anything  to  make 
the  people  think. 

"You  must,  first  of  all,  provide  somehow  a  sound,  public 
opinion. 

"If,  on  the  one  hand,  you  have  large  indifference,  com- 
mercial greed,  impatience  of  any  other  considerations  than 
those  involved  in  the  doctrine  of  demand  and  supply ;  and 
if,  on  the  other,  you  have  the  resentment  provoked  by  real 
or  fancied  wrongs,  imperfect  apprehension  of  fundamental 
economic  truths,  exaggerated  estimates  of  the  value  of 


COMPLETING   TWENTY   YEARS  341 

particular  specifics  for  the  cure  of  existing  conditions,  or 
blind  and  unreasoning  devotion  to  a  particular  leader; 
you  have  hardly  the  elements  for  making  sound,  public 
opinion.  And  yet,  if  you  are  to  avail  yourself  of  them, 
you  must  have  them  at  hand. 

"The  press,  which,  you  must  pardon  me  for  saying  in 
all  frankness,  has  not  always,  in  seeking  to  befriend  labor, 
really  been  eager  to  serve  its  best  interests,  must  here  make 
the  inexorably  necessary  beginning  by  refraining  from  ex- 
aggeration, and  discouraging  heated  speech.  To  inflame 
passion,  to  pervert  facts,  to  withhold  qualifying  considera- 
tions which  sometimes  alter  the  whole  aspect  of  a  particular 
question,  these  are  methods  for  the  poorest  and  least  credit- 
able type  of  a  jury  lawyer  perhaps,  but  they  are  not  those 
of  a  great  public  teacher  and  enlightener,  such  as  a  news- 
paper of  the  first  class  should  be. 

"I  do  not  need  to  be  told  at  this  point  that  the  sensational 
policy  is  usually  most  effective  for  selling  a  newspaper, 
but  I  think  it  would  be  worth  while  for  the  press,  even  from 
a  purely  commercial  point  of  view,  to  consider  whether  a 
policy  which  inflames  the  popular  judgment,  but  does  not 
enlighten  it,  may  not  involve  in  its  consequences  destructive 
forces  which  do  not  discriminate  as  to  where  they  strike, 
and  which,  in  pulling  down,  like  Samson,  the  structure  of 
which  they  are  a  part,  perish  with  their  enemies  in  its  ruins. 
Surely  there  is  some  better  way  than  that,  and  surely  it  is 
worth  while  for  the  press  to  try  and  find  it  out. 

"If  you  can  secure,  therefore,  as  already  mentioned,  the 
aid  of  competent  minds,  representing  the  different  points  of 
view  on  the  labor  question  in  its  largest  aspect,  and  if  they 
are  willing  to  discuss  it  without  prejudice  and  without 
invective,  two  results  at  least  may  be  gained  —  a  large 
group  of  facts,  now  little  recognized,  will  be  brought  into 
view,  and  all  reasonable  men,  of  whatever  calling  or  theory, 
will  be  constrained  to  own,  first,  that  there  is  no  single, 
short-cut,  patent-applied-for  remedy  for  a  situation  so 
complex ;  and  second,  that  along  lines  of  mutual  considera- 


342  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

tion  and  concession  that  solution  is  not  to  be  dismissed  as 
impossible. 

"To  lead  men  to  think  and  know,  and  not  to  shout,  or 
to  shriek,  or  to  strike,  that  is  the  best  service  you  can  render. 
For  then,  when  the  time  comes  that  they  must  both  shout 
and  strike,  they  may  hope  to  do  so  to  some  purpose." 

The  result  of  this  suggestion  was  a  series  of  articles  in 
Mr.  Hearst's  newspapers,  in  New  York,  in  Chicago,  and  in 
San  Francisco,  discussing  the  industrial  situation.  The 
general  theme  was,  "How  can  Labor  and  Capital  be  Recon- 
ciled?" The  Rev.  Dr.  John  P.  Peters,  of  New  York,  con- 
ducted the  debate,  which  continued  from  the  end  of  August, 
1901,  to  the  beginning  of  November.  It  began  with  Bishop 
Potter's  letter  as  above,  and  enlisted  the  competent  services 
of  "college  professors,  national  and  state  officials,  ecclesias- 
tics, lawyers,  philanthropists  and  reformers,  men  of  affairs 
and  labor  leaders."  Among  the  contributors  were  Cardinal 
Gibbons  and  Samuel  Gompers,  Carroll  D.  Wright  and 
Keir  Hardie,  N.  0.  Nelson  and  Jacob  Riis,  Everett  P. 
Wheeler  and  William  T.  Stead,  —  forty-five  in  all.  They 
discussed  "Combinations  of  Employers  and  Employed," 
"Trusts  and  Labor  Unions,"  "Conciliation  and  Arbitra- 
tion," "Socialism  and  Single  Tax,"  and  the  problem  of  the 
"Unemployed."  Bishop  Potter's  contribution,  in  addition 
to  the  opening  letter,  was  a  brief  paper  on  arbitration. 
Dr.  Peters  afterwards  made  the  papers  into  a  book,  and 
they  were  published  (G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1902)  under 
the  title  "Labor  and  Capital." 

The  University  of  Pennsylvania  had  conferred  upon 
Bishop  Potter,  in  February,  1901,  the  honorary  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws.  The  same  degree  was  conferred  upon 
him  in  November  by  Yale  University  at  its  Bicentenary 
Celebration.  "In  recognition,"  said  President  Hadley,  "of 
that  vigor  of  administration  and  unremitting  service  of 
public  morals  which  has  made  the  church  a  power  in  the 
state,  I  confer  upon  you  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws,  and 
admit  you  to  all  its  rights  and  privileges." 


COMPLETING   TWENTY    YEARS  343 

Some  of  the  fruits  of  his  recent  study  and  experience  the 
Bishop  gathered  together  in  a  brief  series  of  Bedell  Lectures 
at  Kenyon  College  (November,  1901)  on  "Man,  Men,  and 
their  Masters."  He  spoke  of  "The  Individual/'  "The 
Corporation"  and  "The  State."  He  considered  these 
matters  at  greater  length  in  a  course  of  lectures  at  Yale 
(April  21  to  May  2;  1902)  on  a  foundation  established  by 
William  E.  Dodge.  The  foundation  called  for  lectures  on 
the  Responsibilities  of  Citizenship.  Bishop  Potter's  sub- 
ject was  "The  Citizen  in  his  Relation  to  the  Industrial 
Situation."  He  spoke  of  "The  Industrial  Situation," 
"The  Citizen  and  the  Working-Man,"  "The  Citizen  and 
the  Capitalist,"  "The  Citizen  and  the  Consumer,"  "The 
Citizen  and  the  Corporation/'  "The  Citizen  and  the  State." 

They  long  remembered  at  Gambier  how  the  Bishop,  after 
his  last  Bedell  lecture,  was  driven  five  miles  over  the  hills 
to  the  neighboring  town  of  Mt.  Vernon,  where  he  addressed 
the  clergy,  the  mayor  and  council,  and  the  citizens,  on 
"Civic  Duties  and  Reform  in  Corporations."  The  next 
day  he  went  to  Cleveland,  and  addressed  the  students  of 
Adelbert  College. 

In  these  two  volumes  of  lectures,  Bishop  Potter  stated  in 
final  form  his  social  message.  They  were  the  summary 
of  a  thousand  sermons.  In  them  he  said  over  again  what 
he  had  been  saying  all  his  life. 

He  referred  in  one  of  them  to  the  fact  that  his  ministry, 
after  his  diaconate,  "began  in  a  large  manufacturing  town 
in  a  seaboard  State,  and  was  from  its  outset  concerned, 
among  others,  with  iron-founders,  moulders,  wrought-iron 
workers,  and  the  like."  These  men  were  his  parishioners 
and  friends.  To  promote  their  welfare  was  his  own  supreme 
interest. 

He  was  called,  indeed,  to  be  the  pastor  of  the  rich.  In 
Boston  and  in  New  York  he  was  brought  into  intimate 
relations  with  the  most  privileged  people.  Wherever  he 
went  he  entered  naturally,  as  by  right,  into  the  best  society. 
It  was  as  a  matter  of  course  that  in  Baden-Baden  he  walked 


344  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

with  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  that  in  London,  even  while 
he  was  a  parish  minister,  content  with  "humble  lodgings," 
he  was  sought  out  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  But 
he  never  forgot  that  his  maternal  grandfather  was  a  school- 
master, and  that  his  paternal  grandfather  was  a  farmer, 
and  that  behind  them  both  were  generations  of  plain,  hard- 
working people.  He  liked  to  remember  not  only  that  his 
English  ancestor,  in  Coventry,  bore  a  modest  title,  but 
that  he  was  a  dyer  of  wool,  and  good  at  his  trade.  His 
associations  enabled  him  to  understand  both  the  privileged 
and  the  unprivileged,  and  the  constant  endeavor  of  his  life 
was  to  help  them  to  understand  each  other. 

The  young  men  who  heard  these  lectures  perceived  that 
the  speaker  was  bringing  to  them  the  results  of  a  vital 
experience,  and  that  he  was  mightily  in  earnest.  They 
gave  him  the  attention  which  youth  eagerly  gives  to  the 
man  who  has  done  great  things.  They  knew  how  he  had 
written  to  the  Mayor  of  New  York,  and  how  he  had  preached 
to  the  President  of  the  United  States.  They  recognized  in 
him,  before  he  said  a  word,  not  only  a  chief  minister  of  his 
church,  but  a  foremost  citizen  of  the  Republic.  They  knew 
also  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  industrial  situation 
from  the  inside,  and  was  repeatedly  called  upon  to  act  as 
arbitrator  or  umpire  in  labor  differences  between  working- 
men  and  their  employers. 

The  lectures  are  a  revelation  of  Bishop  Potter's  extensive 
reading.  They  show  the  results  not  only  of  experience 
but  of  study.  They  are  remarkable  not  only  for  the  straight 
vigor  of  their  style,  but  for  their  close  reasoning,  their 
knowledge  of  history,  and  their  acquaintance  with  books. 
He  quotes  in  one  of  them  an  incident  of  a  colored  preacher 
whose  prayer  "consisted  mainly  in  his  shouting  over  and 
over  again  '0  Lord,  give  us  mo'  powah  —  mo'  powah,  Lord  !' 
until  a  colored  brother  beside  him,  exasperated  beyond 
endurance,  at  length  interjected,  'Oh,  g'long,  brudder, 
Youse  got  powah  enough.  Better  ask  de  Lord  to  give  yo' 
some  mo'  idees  !'"  The  lectures  are  filled  with  ideas. 


COMPLETING   TWENTY   YEARS  345 

How  he  found  time,  in  his  crowded  life,  to  read,  is  a 
mystery.  But  he  did.  In  almost  every  Convention  Ad- 
dress, he  cited  a  paragraph,  sometimes  several  paragraphs, 
from  some  current  writer.  He  read,  pencil  in  hand,  noting 
what  he  could  make  use  of.  The  lectures  show  his  ac- 
quaintance with  Mackenzie's  "Introduction  to  Social 
Philosophy,"  Howell's  "  Trade-Unionism,  New  and  Old," 
Aveling's  "Working  Class  Movement  in  America,"  Geoffrey 
Drage's  "Labor  Problem,"  Shailer  Mathews'  "Social 
Teaching  of  Jesus,"  Mallock's  "Labor  and  the  Popular 
Welfare,"  Eden's  "State  of  the  Poor,"  and  other  like  books. 
The  facility  with  which  he  spoke,  and  the  innumerable  oc- 
casions on  which  his  voice  was  heard,  inclined  some  critics 
to  consider  him  superficial.  He  was  sometimes  superficial, 
inevitably ;  he  sometimes  uttered  opinions  which  had  their 
basis  in  enthusiasm  rather  than  in  reflection.  He  knew 
very  well  that  he  was  not  a  scholar  in  the  technical  sense. 
He  never  thought  of  himself  as  a  man  of  learning.  He  was 
humbly  aware  of  his  limitations.  But  within  these  limita- 
tions, which  made  him  an  administrator  rather  than  a 
philosopher,  he  had  a  clear,  sound  mind  which  saw  into 
the  significance  of  life.  In  these  lectures  he  was  dealing 
with  subjects  about  which  he  was  uncommonly  informed, 
and  in  preparation  for  them  he  read  the  practical  books 
which  he  \vas  eminently  fitted  to  understand ;  and  in 
consequence  the  lectures  at  Yale,  which  repeated  a  great 
part  of  the  lectures  at  Kenyon,  show  him  at  his  intellectual 
best. 

He  was  frankly  the  champion  of  the  working-man.  The 
labor  unions  chose  him  to  arbitrate  their  disputes  with  their 
employers  because  they  were  certain  not  only  of  his  fairness 
but  of  his  sympathy.  In  the  Civic  Federation,  in  which 
he  was  an  active  member,  his  place  was  in  the  Committee 
on  Conciliation  and  Mediation.  Such  a  place  was  suited 
to  his  disposition.  That  spirit  of  comprehensiveness,  which 
governed  his  dealings  with  ecclesiastical  and  theological 
differences,  determined  his  attitude  toward  the  industrial 


346  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

situation.     He    could    recite    with    approval   the   lines   of 

Kipling : 

"Much  I  owe  to  the  Land  that  grew 

More  to  the  Life  that  fed, 
But  most  to  Allah  who  gave  me  two 
Separate  sides  to  my  head." 

He  had  no  partisan  instincts.  Wherever  he  saw  truth  and 
right  he  allied  himself  with  it,  quite  regardless  of  names 
and  labels.  He  belonged  to  no  church  party  —  and  to  all. 
He  was  under  no  allegiance  to  either  socialist  or  capitalist. 
He  was  put  on  the  Conciliation  Committee  of  the  Federa- 
tion because  he  knew  intimately  so  many  directors  of  cor- 
porations, and  was  so  ready  to  tell  them  exactly  what  he 
thought.  He  spoke  with  equal  frankness  to  the  labor 
unions. 

In  this  spirit  of  comprehensiveness,  he  warned  his  hearers 
at  Yale  against  the  fallacy  of  generalization.  "Read  the 
travellers'  tales  about  the  African  negro  from  Zanzibar  to 
the  great  Nyanza,  and  a  greater  scoundrel,  thief,  liar,  brute- 
beast,  does  not  walk  the  earth  :  and  then  read  the  life  of 
David  Livingstone,  and  follow  the  dusky  band  who,  with 
a  tenderness  and  reverence  that  no  funeral  procession  that 
ever  trod  the  earth  excelled,  carried  his  dead  body  all  the 
way  from  that  spot  in  the  heart  of  the  dark  continent  where 
he  breathed  out  his  life  to  the  ship  that  bore  his  sacred  ashes 
to  their  final  resting-place  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  and 
then  take  care  how  you  generalize  about  men,  or  races,  or 
classes,  on  the  basis  of  insufficient  facts.  For  with  men, 
whether  in  a  wilderness  or  in  a  mill,  it  is,  after  all,  as  it  is 
with  women  in  a  kitchen.  There  are  heads  of  households, 
whom  we  all  know,  who  never  keep  a  servant  a  week,  whose 
every  domestic  is  a  thief,  an  idler,  or  an  incompetent  ; 
people  whose  homes  are  the  perpetual  scenes  of  discussions 
and  dismissals,  and  whose  testimony,  if  it  were  given  in  a 
court  of  justice  under  oath,  would  be  that  there  had  never 
been  an  honest  or  faithful  domestic  in  their  houses  ;  and 
yet,  next  door  to  just  such  people,  there  arc  households 


COMPLETING    TWENTY    YEARS  347 

wherein  reign  peace  and  order  and  mutual  consideration, 
and  where  the  service  that  is  rendered  earns  not  only  its 
wages,  but  respect  and  gratitude  —  and  deserves  them 
both." 

Thus  in  November,  1902,  addressing  the  League  for 
Political  Education,  he  said,  as  on  many  other  occasions, 
that  the  solution  of  industrial  difficulties  lay  in  better 
understanding  of  employers  and  employees,  in  greater 
sympathy,  and  fuller  realization  of  social  duty.  He  de- 
clared that  such  conditions  as  existed  in  the  coal  fields, 
where  men  at  the  age  of  fifty  were  at  the  end  not  only  of 
their  activity  but  of  their  life,  must  be  changed  by  outside 
pressure.  Only  by  combination  of  working-men  could 
betterment  be  brought  about.  Commenting  on  the  great 
coal  strike,  he  said  that  after  hearing  both  sides  his  impres- 
sion was  that  each  was  determined  to  misunderstand  the 
other.  "The  miners  believed  that  the  operators  wanted 
to  put  the  screws  on  them,  and  the  operators  seemed  to 
think  that  the  men  wanted  to  get  control  of  their  property." 

In  December,  speaking  on  the  lesson  of  the  coal  strike  to 
the  Men's  Club  of  Grace  Chapel,  .he  said,  "I  believe  in 
strikes.  I  believe  also  in  the  conservative  value  of  the 
organization  from  which  the  strikes  come."  One  lesson 
he  found  in  the  power  of  organization,  but  he  found  another 
lesson  in  the  exaggeration  of  that  power.  "It  is  true,"  he 
said,  "that  organized  labor  should  realize  the  change  that 
was  going  on  in  the  American  mind  toward  it.  This  Re- 
public stands  for  personal  freedom ;  anything  that  impairs 
that  freedom,  the  country  will  not  stand  for."  He  believed 
that  the  time  was  approaching  when  strikes  will  cease,  be- 
cause men  will  ask  themselves  in  the  presence  of  their  dif- 
ferences, not  what  considerations  of  profit  and  dividends,  but 
what  considerations  of  justice  and  humanity  are  involved. 

In  his  Yale  lectures  he  declared  again  his  conviction  that 
the  permanent  solution  of  the  problems  of  industry  is  in 
religion.  He  spoke  with  enthusiasm  of  the  work  of  such 
men  as  Frederick  Denison  Maurice,  Charles  Kingsley  and 


348  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

Thomas  Hughes.  These  men  turned  upon  the  perplexing 
problems  of  our  social  disorders  the  light  of  a  divine  life. 
For  centuries  the  church  had  been  getting  farther  and 
farther  away  from  the  people,  understanding  them  less, 
seeing  them  less,  loving  them  less.  For  well-nigh  a  thousand 
years  religion  stood  in  the  popular  mind  only  for  a  colossal 
and  portentous  menace  on  the  one  hand,  and  for  a  splendid 
ceremonial  and  a  grasping  company  of  official  ceremonial- 
ists  on  the  other.  And  then,  at  last,  the  Bible,  with  its 
strange  and  unfamiliar  message,  broke  on  the  ears  of  the 
people,  and  slowly  filtered  down  into  the  popular  conscious- 
ness, as  the  revelation  of  a  new  and  divine  social  order,  here 
and  to-day. 

"There  are  still  ecclesiastics,  even  among  ourselves,  who 
do  not  believe  anything  of  the  sort.  There  are  still  devout 
men,  and  they  in  holy  orders,  who  believe  that  my  presence 
here,  and  yours  as  listeners  to  anything  that  I  may  say,  is 
a  grave  misuse,  if  not  a  dangerous  perversion,  of  spiritual 
office  and  function.  There  are  still  men  and  women, 
everywhere,  who  call  themselves  religious,  wrho  do  not 
hesitate  to  maintain  that  religion  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  social  conditions  of  human  life,  unless  it  be  to 
teach  men  to  look  forward  to  an  existence  when  they  and 
their  fellows  shall  be  delivered  from  them ;  and,  meanwhile, 
to  cultivate  such  patience  and  resignation  as  they  may. 
And  since  this  is  so,  you  and  I  must  first  of  all  be  able,  in 
the  face  of  all  that  confronts  us  in  these  problems,  social, 
economic,  and  industrial,  to  show  that  religion  has  some 
warrant  for  being  concerned  with  them ;  arid  that  in  the 
great  task  of  their  solution,  we  may  not,  must  not,  withhold 
our  hands.  To  what,  now,  docs  such  a  challenge  send  us, 
if  not  to  the  feet  of  Jesus  Christ  ?  He  is  our  Master,  and 
we  His  pupils. " 

Within  the  two  weeks  during  which  Bishop  Potter  was 
engaged  in  delivering  the  Yale  lectures,  he  preached  two 
notable  sermons  :  one  in  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  at  the 
consecration  of  Dr.  Vinton,  the  other  in  Philadelphia,  at 


COMPLETING   TWENTY    YEARS  349 

the  Consecration  of  Dr.  Mackay-Smith.  Having  been  a 
bishop  now  for  almost  twenty  years  he  addressed  the  men 
who  were  newly  entering  upon  that  office,  naturally  and 
revealingly,  out  of  his  own  experience. 

Speaking  in  Worcester  he  said  :  "A  Bishop  is  often  faulted 
because  he  will  not  concern  himself  with  controversies  which, 
at  one  time  or  another,  have  threatened  to  rend  the  church 
in  twain  and  concerning  which,  we  say  complainingly,  he 
has  no  word  to  speak.  Well,  when  we  have  gotten  tired, 
brethren,  of  saying  that  he  does  not  speak  because  he  does 
not  dare  to,  it  may  sometimes  dawn  upon  us  that  he  does 
not  speak  because  the  question  is  really  not  large  enough 
to  make  it  worth  while  for  him  to  concern  himself  with  it. 

"Your  neighbor  in  the  next  parish  uses  wafer  bread,  does 
he,  my  reverend  brother,  and  you  have  gone  to  your  bishop 
to  insist  that  he  shall  discipline  him ;  and  the  bishop  is  — • 
well,  quiescent  and  inert,  and  you  are  going  to  denounce 
him  as  a  traitor  to  the  Protestant  religion.  But  one  of 
these  days  it  is  just  possible  that  it  may  dawn  upon  you 
that  your  bishop  is  passing  sleepless  nights,  and  perplexed 
though  prayerful  days,  looking  at  the  church  and  our 
modern  life  with  a  little  wider  outlook  than  yours.  He 
sees  perils  that  you  have  never  dreamed  of,  and  that  are 
much  greater  than  the  use  or  non-use  of  wafer  bread." 

"Ah,  no!  no!  It  is  not  merely  business  energy,  nor 
administrative  ability,  nor  even  pulpit  power  that  we 
want  in  the  episcopate.  An  episcopate  of  true  power 
must  be  an  episcopate  of  vision.  Through  the  sophistries 
of  the  moment,  through  the  fallacies  alike  of  superstition 
and  fanaticism,  the  bishop's  must  be  an  eye  that  penetrates 
beneath  them  to  those  great  and  unchanging  truths  that 
underlie  them  all." 

Speaking  in  Philadelphia,  he  commented  on  the  recent 
action  of  an  English  bishop  who  had  "sought  to  unburden 
himself  of  an  episcopal  palace,  in  a  remote  and  inaccessible 
rural  neighborhood,  whose  maintenance  and  occupancy 
would  greatly  tax  his  resources,  and  isolate,  and  so  abridge, 


350  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

his  influence."  This  "sane  position,"  he  said,  "was  at 
once  met  with  a  vehement  protest  against  the  profane 
modern  who  would  surrender  a  notable  historic  monument 
in  order  to  utilize  its  proceeds  for  merely  practical  pur- 
poses. The  episcopate;  it  was  urged,  must  maintain  itself 
with  a  certain  state,  and  pomp,  and  ceremony,  if  it 
were  to  maintain  its  influence."  Against  this  idea  of  the 
office  of  a  bishop  he  expressed  himself  with  vigor.  In  the  New 
Testament,  he  said,  "the  habits,  the  character,  the  record, 
the  domestic  relationships  of  a  bishop,  are  defined  with 
considerable  minuteness ;  but  through  it  all  there  is  no 
remotest  trace  of  any  hint  that  pledges  it  to  state,  or  cost, 
or  splendor.  On  the  contrary,  when  the  Church,  in  that 
form  set  forth  in  the  Ordinal,  which  we  are  using  this  morn- 
ing, would  draw  for  us  her  ideal  portrait  of  a  bishop,  she 
frames  it  in  these  incomparable  words  of  its  Epistle  in  which 
the  foremost  figure  of  all  her  first  Apostles  exclaims:  'I 
have  coveted  no  man's  silver,  or  gold  or  apparel.  Yea,  ye 
yourselves  know  that  these  hands  have  ministered  to  my 
necessities,  and  to  them  that  were  with  me.  I  have  showed 
you  all  things,  how  that  so  laboring  ye  ought  to  support 
the  weak,  and  to  remember  the  words  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
how  He  said,  'It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 

That  kind  of  bishop  he  himself  desired  to  be ;    not  min- 
istered unto,  but  ministering ;    not  receiving  but  giving  - 
giving  his  time,  his  energy,  his  best  thought,  his  whole  life 
to  the  advancement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

His  official  diary  about  this  time  reads  as  follows : 

"April  20,  Third  Sunday  after  Easter  A.M.  —  In  the 
Chapel  of  Yale  University,  preached. 

"P.M.  — At  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation,  New  York, 
delivered  an  address. 

"  Evening.  —  At  St.  Mary's  Church,  Mott  Haven,  con- 
firmed twenty-six  and  addressed  them. 

"April  21,  Monday.  —  At  Yale  University  delivered  the 
first  of  the  Dodge  Lectures  on  Citizenship  and  the  Indus- 
trial Situation. 


COMPLETING   TWENTY   YEARS  351 

"April  22,  Tuesday.  —  At  All  Saints'  Church,  Worcester, 
at  the  Consecration  of  the  Rev.  A.  H.  Vinton,  D.D.,  as 
Bishop  of  Western  Massachusetts,  preached. 

"April  23,  Wednesday.  —  At  Yale  University,  delivered 
the  second  of  the  Dodge  Foundation  Lectures. 

"April  24,  Thursday.— At  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Cross,  New  York,  preached,  confirmed  fifty-four  and  ad- 
dressed them. 

"April  25,  St.  Mark's  Day.  —  At  Yale  University  de- 
livered the  third  of  the  lectures  of  the  Dodge  Foundation. 

"April  27,  Fourth  Sunday  after  Easter.  —  At  Christ 
Church,  Pelham,  preached,  confirmed  nineteen,  addressed 
them  and  celebrated  the  Holy  Communion. 

"3:30  P.M. —  At  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Comforter, 
Eltingville,  preached,  confirmed  five  and  addressed  them. 

"5  P.M.  —  At  St.  Simon's  Church,  Concord,  preached, 
confirmed  seven  and  addressed  them. 

"Evening.  — At  Christ  Church,  New  Brighton,  preached, 
confirmed  thirty-seven  and  addressed  them. 

"April  28,  Monday. — At  Yale  University,  delivered 
the  fourth  of  the  Dodge  Foundation  Lectures. 

"April  30,  Wednesday.  —  Delivered  the  fifth  of  the  Dodge 
Foundation  Lectures. 

"May  1,  St.  Philip  and  St.  James'  Day,  A.M. — At  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Philadelphia,  preached  the 
sermon  at  the  consecration  of  the  Rev.  Alexander  Mackay- 
Smith,  D.D.  as  Bishop  Coadjutor  of  the  Diocese  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. 

"P.M.  — Visited  St.  Luke's  Home,  New  York. 

"Evening. — Addressed  in  private  a  meeting  of  men  in 
the  interest  of  the  present  administration  of  the  Philippine 
Islands. 

"May  2,  Friday. — At  Yale  University,  delivered  the 
Sixth  (and  last)  of  the  Dodge  Foundation  Lectures. 

"May  4,  Fifth  Sunday  after  Easter,  9:30  A.M.  —  At  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Innocents,  Highland  Falls,  confirmed 
sixteen  and  addressed  them. 


352  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

"10:30  A.M.  — At  the  Military  Chapel,  West  Point, 
preached,  confirmed  four  and  addressed  them. 

"Evening.  — At  the  Church  of  the  Advocate,  New  York, 
preached,  confirmed  forty  and  addressed  them. 

"May  5,  Monday  A.M. — At  the  Church  of  the  Ascen- 
sion, New  York,  celebrated  the  Holy  Communion,  and  met 
the  officers  of  the  Parochial  Mission  Society. 

"2  P.M.  —  Addressed  the  Sunday  School  Conference  at 
the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine. 

"5  P.M. — At  No.  10,  North  Washington  Square,  New 
York,  presided  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Italian  Mission. 

May  6,  Tuesday,  4: 30  P.M.  —  At  No.  10,  North  Washing- 
ton Square,  New  York,  presided  at  a  special  meeting  of  the 
Trustees  of  the  Cathedral. 

"Evening. — At  Kane  Lodge.  A.  and  F.  M.;  delivered 
an  address. 

"May  7,  Wednesday,  P.M. — At  the  Cathedral  House, 
delivered  an  address  at  the  closing  of  the  Cathedral 
School." 

The  next  entry  is  under  date  of  June  1,  First  Sunday  after 
Trinity.  -  -  "  At  sea  on  S.  S.  Oceanic,  read  prayers  and 
preached." 

Bishop  Potter  had  broken  down.  In  the  midst  of  the 
service  on  May  7th,  when  the  time  came  for  him  to  speak 
to  the  boys  of  the  choir  school,  he  was  found  to  be  in  a 
faint.  He  aroused  himself,  and  spoke  as  he  had  intended, 
but  it  was  plain  that  his  immediate  engagements  must  be 
cancelled.  His  physician  pronounced  him  physically  sound, 
and  specialists  who  examined  him  were  of  the  opinion  that 
the  trouble  was  only  overwork.  It  was  not  that  the  pre- 
ceding weeks  had  been  crowded  with  appointments  beyond 
precedent ;  they  were  good  average  weeks.  But  he  had 
reached  the  inevitable  point  where  it  was  impossible  to 
continue  at  that  pressure. 

He  sent  for  one  of  his  most  congenial  friends,  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Crosvenor,  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation, 
and  asked  him  to  go  with  him  and  one  of  his  daughters 


COMPLETING   TWENTY   YEARS  353 

for  three  months  over  the  sea.  He  sailed  on  May  28th, 
with  his  stateroom  filled  with  flowers,  sending  back  word 
to  his  friends,  "I  wish  you  would  deny  that  I  am  ill,  for  I 
am  only  very  tired."  But  he  was  much  more  than  tired. 
He  lacked  two  years  of  the  scriptural  threescore  and  ten, 
but  he  had  passed  the  summit  of  his  strength.  Whatever 
it  was  that  happened  to  him  that  day  when  he  fainted 
in  the  chancel,  it  was  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

In  the  New  York  Evening  Post  for  July  12th  (1902) 
appeared  an  announcement  of  the  engagement  of  Bishop 
Potter  to  Mrs.  Alfred  Corning  Clark.  On  October  4th, 
in  the  church  at  Cooperstown,  they  were  married.  Nothing 
in  his  life  revealed  more  clearly  his  innate  unworldliness. 
The  fact  that  Mrs.  Clark  was  a  woman  of  wealth  seems  never 
to  have  entered  into  his  mind.  He  was  surprised  at  the 
natural  comments  of  the  newspapers.  Money  had  never 
meant  much  to  him,  except  as  it  was  convenient  for  the 
furthering  of  his  great  plans  for  the  general  good.  He  had  no 
need  of  it.  His  tastes  were  simple,  and  he  had  a  preference 
for  plain  living.  Mrs.  Clark  was  only  a  few  years  younger 
than  himself,  a  helper  in  many  of  his  undertakings,  sym- 
pathetic with  his  plans,  appreciative  of  his  ideals.  She 
lived,  indeed,  in  a  large  house,  but  with  more  genuine  sim- 
plicity of  spirit  than  may  be  found  in  the  soul  of  many 
a  lodger  in  a  "third  floor  back." 

At  the  Diocesan  Convention  in  September,  1902,  Bishop 
Potter  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  year  following 
would  be  the  twentieth  of  his  .episcopate.  He  suggested 
the  need  of  more  adequate  episcopal  service  than  he  might 
be  able  to  render.  The  manner  of  meeting  this  need  he  left 
to  the  decision  of  the  Diocese.  He  might  call  to  his  assist- 
ance, upon  occasion,  bishops  from  outside  the  Diocese  ;  or  the 
Diocese  might  be  divided ;  or  a  coadjutor  might  be  elected. 

There  was  no  doubt  in  his  own  mind  as  to  the  wisest 
course  to  be  pursued.  He  was  in  favor  of  the  election  of  a 
coadjutor.  Writing  to  Dr.  Batten  (February  23,  1903) 
he  said  :  "In  regard  to  the  right  of  the  Diocese  to  decide  a 

2A 


354  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

question  whether  as  to  division,  or  the  election  of  a  coad- 
jutor to  its  Bishop,  as  against  the  right  of  the  Bishop  him- 
self to  settle  such  questions,  I  feel  very  strongly,  and  I 
think  the  canons  are  very  clear.  The  whole  genius  of  our 
Church's  history  is  against  individualism  in  its  government ; 
and,  in  matters  which  concern  the  exercise  of  authority,  it  is 
quite  easy  to  see  that  a  bishop  might  withold  a  request 
for  either  a  coadjutor  or  the  division  of  the  diocese,  for 
reasons  which,  although  he  might  be  quite  unconscious  of 
the  fact,  would  not  be  altogether  worthy.  The  love  of 
power  is  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  imperishable  instincts 
of  human  nature. 

"The  Church  has  very  wisely,  therefore,  I  think,  referred 
these  questions  to  the  Diocese ;  that  is,  to  the  Diocesan 
Convention.  But  I  have  not  hesitated  to  give  to  the 
Church,  in  two  or  three  recent  addresses,  my  own  judgment 
in  the  matter,  which  is,  in  substance  - 

"  (a)  That  the  division  of  a  diocese  like  New  York  would 
be  altogether  unfortunate  and  unwise.  It  has  no  see  city 
other  than  New  York  City,  and  its  extremities  are  so  weak 
that  if  severed  from  the  mother  heart  and  head  there  is 
only  the  remotest  prospect  of  their  being  cared  for. 

"(6)  Again,  as  I  have  repeatedly  said,  any  redistribution 
of  the  territory  of  the  State  of  New  York  for  which  this 
Diocese  might  be  responsible  should  reckon-in  other  dio- 
ceses which  have  been  created  out  of  the  original  Diocese 
of  New  York,  and  do  what  could  be  done  to  strengthen 
them.  It  was  for  this  reason  that,  a  few  years  ago,  I  strove 
for  action  in  the  Federate  Council  on  a  plan  with  which 
you  are  already  familiar.  I  still  think  that  plan  is  the 
wisest  and  most  helpful  that  could  be  devised.  But  if  the 
other  dioceses  in  this  State  will  not  unite  in  employing  it, 
then  my  personal  conviction  is  that  the  wisest  step  is  the 
election  of  a  coadjutor  for  the  Diocese  of  New  York,  because 
such  an  arrangement  would  enable  the  Diocese  to  have  a 
better  maternal  care  for  the  feebler  parts  that  are  now  de- 
pendent upon  her. 


COMPLETING   TWENTY    YEARS  355 

"It  is  expected;  I  know,  by  gentlemen  who  are  zealous 
for  the  division  of  the  Diocese,  that  after  that  division  has 
been  consummated,  or  before,  endowment  funds  could  be 
secured  for  the  new  diocese,  or  some  other  method  devised 
by  which  the  burdens  now  resting  upon  this  diocese  shall 
be  borne  by  the  new  one.  For  any  such  belief  I  do  not 
think  that  there  is  the  remotest  warrant ;  and  the  remoter 
counties,  parishes,  and  clergy  of  the  present  diocese,  if  they 
are  wise,  will  insist  upon  retaining  their  relation  to  their 
Mother." 

The  plan  to  which  the  Bishop  referred  "  involved  the 
creation  of  two  new  dioceses,  and  the  redistribution  among 
the  seven  of  the  whole  territory  of  the  State." 

Two  committees  were  appointed  by  the  Convention,  one 
on  the  election  of  a  bishop  coadjutor,  the  other  on  the  re- 
adjustment of  diocesan  lines.  The  Bishop's  Annual  Ad- 
dress in  1903  left  the  matter  entirely  open.  "It  is  for  the 
Convention  and  the  Diocese,  which  are  permanencies,  and 
not  for  the  Bishop  who  is  an  incident,  to  decide  what  shall 
be  the  policy  of  a  Diocese ;  and  therefore  it  is  for  the  Con- 
vention, and  not  for  me,  to  determine  whether  it  shall 
exscind  a  part  of  its  present  jurisdiction,  or  whether  it  shall 
elect  a  coadjutor.  If  it  shall  adopt  the  latter  mode  of 
relief,  in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  Section  V  of 
Canon  19  of  Title  I  of  the  Digest,  which  requires  that 
'before  the  election  of  a  Bishop  Coadjutor  the  Bishop  of  the 
Diocese  shall  consent  in  writing  to  such  election,  and  in 
such  consent  shall  state  the  duties  which  he  thereby  assigns 
to  the  Bishop  Coadjutor  when  duly  elected  and  conse- 
crated,' I  beg  to  say  that  I  hereby  consent  to  the  election 
of  a  Bishop  Coadjutor  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York,  that  I 
hereby  resign  to  him  one-half  of  my  salary,  and  that  I 
hereby  assign  to  him  all  confirmations  in  the  principal 
parishes  in  the  city  of  New  York,  all  consecrations  of 
churches,  and  ordinations,  and  all  administration  of  disci- 
pline. I  shall  be  glad,  if  I  may,  to  retain  as  my  own  duty 
visitations  to  rural  churches,  the  admission  of  candidates 


356  HENRY    CODMAN   POTTER 

for  Holy  Orders,  and  of  persons  in  Holy  Orders  of  other 
dioceses  applying  to  be  transferred  to  this." 

Following  this  address,  the  Convention  voted  that  it 
deemed  "the  election  of  a  coadjutor  the  necessary  provi- 
sion at  this  time  for  more  episcopal  service."  They  there- 
upon elected  to  that  office  (October  1,  1903)  the  Rev.  Dr. 
David  Hummel  Greer,  rector  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Church. 
On  motion  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Grosvenor,  whose  name  stood 
next  to  that  of  Dr.  Greer  in  the  numerical  order  of  ballots, 
the  election  was  made  unanimous. 

"I  believe  profoundly,"  said  Bishop  Potter,  "that  the 
clergy  and  the  laity  of  this  Diocese  will  find  in  him  a  man  of 
large  and  generous  sympathies,  and  of  a  willingness  to 
recognize  the  governing  conditions  of  the  Diocese  of  New 
York,  and  to  have  charge  of  the  administration  of  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men.  I  have  great  delight  in  presenting 
him  to  you,  and  asking  you  to  rise  and  receive  from  his  own 
lips  the  answrer  to  the  call  which  you  have  given  him." 

Dr.  Greer,  addressing  the  Convention,  said:  "I  am  too 
much  impressed  with  the  solemnity  of  this  occasion  to  use 
the  ordinary  language  of  conventional  courtesy  to  thank 
you  for  what  you  have  done.  I  do  not  at  all  regard  it  in 
light  of  honor  or  compliment.  It  is  far  above  all  that.  It 
is  a  great  and  sacred  trust  to  which  you  have  seen  fit  to 
summon  me.  I  think  I  may  say  that  many  of  you  know  I 
did  not  seek  it.  I  rather  shrank  from  it.  I  was  happy  and 
contented  in  my  field  of  work,  and  hoped  that  in  that  field 
I  could  fill  up  the  full  measure  of  my  usefulness  to  God  and 
my  fcllowmen,  and  it  breaks  my  heart  to  leave  it.  But 
you  have  called  me. 

"One  thing,  however,  you  could  not,  and  cannot,  and  I 
am  sure,  would  not  compel  me  to  do.  You  would  not 
compel  me  to  be  the  bishop  of  any  party  or  school  of  thought 
in  this  Diocese  or  in  the  Church  at  large.  I  recognize  that 
fact  that  beneath  the  surface,  however  diversified  that 
surface  may  be,  there  is  a  deep  and  loyal  devotion  to  our 
common  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no 


COMPLETING   TWENTY   YEARS  357 

name  that  can  so  touch  and  sway  our  hearts  as  that  name. 
That  name  is  the  one  that  I  shall  recognize,  and  that  per- 
sonality is  the  one  that  I  shall  try  to  serve. 

"There  are  only  two  things  for  me  to  say  in  conclusion. 
One  is  that  it  would  be  a  great  privilege  to  stand  by  the 
side  of  our  worthy  and  noble  Bishop,  who  has  for  a  score 
of  years  borne  the  burden  of  this  arduous  responsibility 
and  work,  and  who  has  attained  the  highest  reputation  and 
character,  not  only  throughout  this  Diocese,  but  throughout 
the  Church,  and  who  has  discharged  his  duties  in  such  a 
faithful  and  conscientious  manner,  and  with  such  states- 
manlike ability. 

"The  only  other  thing  I  have  to  say,  gentlemen,  is  this : 
I  cannot  but  recognize  your  summons  as  the  call  of  God, 
and,  whatever  it  may  involve  to  me  personally,  with  such 
power  as  God  has  given  me  and  such  help  as  you  can  fur- 
nish and  supply,  I  will,  if  your  choice  shall  be  confirmed  by 
the  Church  at  large,  accept  the  responsibility  and  devote 
myself  to  the  work  of  that  high  office." 

Dr.  Greer  was  consecrated  on  January  26th,  1904. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  PEOPLE'S  BISHOP 


IN  the  course  of  the  correspondence  which  preceded  the 
diocesan  provision  for  episcopal  relief,  Bishop  Potter  wrote 
to  a  friend,  "Whatever  may  be  done  for  the  relief  of  the 
Metropolitan  Diocese,  care  should  be  taken  not  to  create  a 
jurisdiction  which  shall  condemn  its  Ordinary  to  the  fate 
of  a  Cockney  bishop.  No  bishop  who  is  wholly  out  of 
contact  with  rural  life  can  fail  to  become  that  very  preju- 
diced, unsympathetic,  and  opinionated  thing!" 

He  chose,  therefore,  the  country  parishes  ;  adding  to  them 
the  smaller  churches  of  the  city.  With  all  his  appreciation 
of  social  ceremony,  and  his  frank  pleasure  in  the  festivities 
of  " society,"  he  greatly  enjoyed  the  company  of  informal 
people.  He  liked  to  hear  the  boys  of  the  Tenth  Ward, 
pointing  him  out  as  he  passed,  say,  "There's  the  Bish.  !" 
And  if  they  found  it  in  their  hearts  to  add,  as  one  of  them 
did,  "he  aint  no  chump,"  he  prized  the  homely  compliment 
above  all  the  eulogies  of  eloquent  toastmasters  at  splendid 
banquets.  He  liked  the  simple  fashions  of  the  country. 

The  country  clergy  knew  him  best.  He  breakfasted  and 
dined  and  supped  with  them,  and  spent  the  night.  There 
is,  indeed,  a  legend  of  a  country  parson  who  explained  that 
the  three  strokes  sounded  on  his  church  bell  while  the  bishop 
said  the  benediction  were  intended  partly  as  a  sign  to  the 
people  in  their  homes  to  share  in  the  blessing,  but  partly 
also  as  a  warning  to  the  cook  in  the  kitchen  of  the  rectory 
to  serve  the  dinner  without  delay  because  the  bishop  was 
always  in  a  hurry.  But  in  the  latter  days,  when  the  rural 

358 


THE   PEOPLE'S  BISHOP  359 

parishes  were  his  particular  charge,  and  there  was  not  so 
much  reason  for  haste,  he  came  and  stayed. 

It  was  his  custom,  as  he  was  being  driven  over  from  the 
station,  to  refresh  his  memory  about  the  parish.  He  talked 
with  the  driver,  and  asked  him  questions.  He  recalled  the 
names  of  the  principal  people.  He  made  himself  acquainted 
with  the  local  situation.  By  the  time  of  his  arrival  at  his 
destination  he  knew  nearly  everything  of  importance  which 
had  happened  in  the  place  during  the  past  twelve  months. 
Thus  he  was  able  to  connect  both  his  sermon  and  his  con- 
versation with  the  parish  life. 

To  the  country  parson  he  was  both  friend  and  father. 
The  joy  and  inspiration  of  his  visit  lasted  till  he  came 
again.  He  listened  with  patience  and  interest  to  accounts 
of  difficulties  and  discouragements,  of  hopes  and  plans,  and 
gave  counsel  and  suggestion.  He  brought  comfort  in 
trouble.  His  presence  was  a  benediction.  He  was  the 
pastor  of  the  pastors  and  their  families.  The  gracious  and 
considerate  and  friendly  things  which  he  did  were  in- 
numerable. 

"After  my  ordination  to  the  diaconate,"  says  one  of  his 
clergy,  "the  hotel  in  which  I  was  boarding  was  destroyed 
by  fire.  I  immediately  wrote  to  the  Bishop  to  ask  him  to 
send  me  a  duplicate  Letter  of  Orders.  He  replied,  "Most 
gladly  will  I  send  you  the  desired  duplicate.  If  your  books 
were  destroyed,  please  order  fifty  dollars'  worth  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Whittaker,  and  have  them  charged  to  me." 

"Your  sermon  of  yesterday,"  he  wrote  to  another,  "was 
a  great  treat  to  all  of  us,  and  I  wish  I  could  adequately  ex- 
press to  you  with  what  delight  and  refreshment  I  listened 
to  it.  No  one  else  could  have  done  it  so  well  as  yourself, 
and  you  could  not  have  done  it  better." 

"I  remember,"  says  Dr.  Booker  Washington,  "how  he 
looked  over  his  program  for  the  evening.  He  had  already 
two  engagements,  but  he  said  to  me,  'If  the  meeting  lasts 
long  enough  I  will  appear  upon  the  platform.' '  And  so 
he  did,  at  half-past  ten. 


360  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Mrs.  Crary  describes  an  early  confirmation  service.  "A 
young  naval  officer,  a  lieutenant,  who  had  served  in  Admiral 
Dewey's  fleet  at  Manila  (and  is  now  himself  an  admiral) 
came  to  Poughkeepsie  on  the  return  of  the  fleet,  and  re- 
ceived holy  baptism  at  the  hands  of  Dr.  Crary.  Some  time 
after  baptism,  he  was  off  again  for  duty  for  a  long  time. 
One  day,  Dr.  Crary  received  a  letter  from  him  saying  that 
his  vessel  would  be  in  port  for  only  a  short  time,  and  could 
he  be  confirmed?  and  when?  Dr.  Crary  wrote  to  the 
Bishop,  who  replied  that  he  was  about  to  leave  Lake  Placid, 
and  would  get  off  the  train  at  Poughkeepsie,  and  have  the 
confirmation  service  at  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Comforter 
at  7  :  30  on  a  certain  day.  This  he  did,  and  the  young 
naval  officer,  and  three  others  who  were  waiting  for  con- 
firmation, received  the  holy  rite,  in  the  bright  sunshine  of 
a  summer  morning." 

The  Rev.  James  E.  Freeman  remembers  how  "at  the 
close  of  a  long  and  exacting  service,  after  administering 
confirmation  to  a  large  class,  he  had  retired  to  the  vestry 
room  and  was  removing  his  episcopal  robes  when  report 
was  brought  to  him  that  a  child  had  just  reached  the  church, 
who  had  been  detained  by  the  storm,  and  thus  had  failed 
to  receive  confirmation  at  his  hands.  Without  a  word  of 
demur,  although  pressed  for  time,  he  immediately  returned 
to  the  chancel,  and  there  in  the  presence  of  a  few  who  had 
lingered,  he  followed  the  prescribed  office  of  confirmation  in 
all  its  parts,  and  administered  the  solemn  rite  to  the  kneeling 
girl.  Upon  pronouncing  the  benediction,  he  bent  low,  and 
lifting  the  little  figure,  kissed  the  upturned  face." 

"On  one  occasion,"  says  the  Rev.  Thornton  F.  Turner, 
"I  took  him  in  his  vestments  in  a  carriage  to  the  house  of 
a  cripple.  It  was  a  two-room  rear-tenement.  I  remember 
particularly  the  pleasure  he  seemed  to  take  in  it,  his  gracious 
manner  to  the  poor  woman  whom  he  confirmed,  and  his 
speaking  of  it  to  some  one,  in  my  presence,  as  having  been  a 
source  of  gratification  to  him." 

"An  old  bedridden  woman  who  had  come  to  our  notice 


THE   PEOPLE'S  BISHOP  361 

at  St.  John's  Chapel,  New  York,  where  I  was  at  that  time 
a  curate/'  says  the  Rev.  Edgar  H.  Goold,  "had  expressed  an 
earnest  desire  to  be  confirmed.  Bishop  Potter  was  in- 
formed of  her  wish,  and  replied  by  saying  that  he  would 
confirm  her  privately  on  the  evening  of  his  visit  to  St. 
John's.  The  woman  herself,  some  seventy  odd  years  old,  and 
living  alone  in  a  little  basement  room  in  Varick  street,  could 
hardly  believe  it  possible  that  a  bishop  would  have  a  special 
confirmation  for  her."  But  he  came.  It  was  at  the  very 
end  of  his  life,  the  next  to  the  last  of  his  confirmations. 
"His  dignified,  kindly  courtesy  put  the  old  woman  at  her 
ease  at  once.  There  in  the  dimly  lighted  tenement  the 
Bishop  confirmed  her  as  she  lay  on  her  sick  bed,  with  no 
one  but  a  friend  and  myself  to  witness  it,  and  even  then  the 
room  seemed  crowded !" 

This  consideration  the  Bishop  extended  not  only  to  in- 
dividuals but  to  groups  and  classes  who  seemed  to  him 
neglected  or  ill-treated.  He  deserved  the  title  which  Miss 
Keyser  gave  him  in  her  excellent  little  book,  "Bishop  Potter, 
the  People's  Friend." 

He  was  concerned  about  the  long  hours  of  the  New  York 
firemen,  and  wrote  to  the  mayor  in  approval  of  a  bill  to 
shorten  them.  "My  dear  Mr.  Mayor,"  he  said,  "As  you 
know,  I  am  no  friend  of  the  privileged  classes,  and  it  is 
easy  to  make  such  of  persons  in  civic  employ.  But  effi- 
ciency is  not  obtained  by  cheapness,  by  overwork,  or  by 
empty  praise.  The  Fire  Department  has  had  a  great  deal 
of  the  latter.  Is  it  not  time  to  give  it  some  more  substan- 
tial recognition  ?  It  is  to-day  the  only  department  of  public 
service  in  which  we  are  wont  to  look  for  heroic  and  self- 
forgetful  action.  May  it  not  be  wisely  rewarded  and  en- 
couraged by  making  that  service  somewhat  less  severe  and 
exhausting?" 

About  the  same  time  he  was  appealed  to  in  a  letter  signed 
"A  Christian  Policeman,"  to  write  to  the  mayor  regarding 
a  proposed  change  in  the  order  of  police  duty.  "Knowing 
your  feelings  were  ever  for  the  uplifting  of  all  classes  of 


362  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

people,  and  particularly  working  classes,  I  take  this  oppor- 
tunity of  appealing  to  you  to  see  if  you  could  be  interested 
in  protecting  the  Police  Officers  in  keeping  their  system  of 
work,  known  as  the  'three  platoon  system/  and  if  favor- 
able to  you  to  use  your  influence  with  the  mayor  to  see  it 
in  the  light  which  I  am  sure  you  would." 

Writing  to  Miss  Keyser  (April  9,  1904),  he  said:  "I 
wish  to  express  my  profound  sympathy  with  the  movement 
for  vestibules  for  New  York  street  cars.  The  front  plat- 
forms of  cars  should  be  reserved  exclusively  for  motormen, 
and  motormen  should  be  protected,  in  the  discharge  of 
their  duties,  from  exposures  which  have  in  them  very  strong 
provocation  to  intemperance,  as  well  as  very  grave  peril 
to  life.  I  hope  the  expression  of  the  Association  will  be 
vigorous,  as  well  as  temperate." 

He  was  actively  interested  in  the  Actors  Church  Alliance, 
of  which  he  was  the  first  president,  with  the  Rev.  Walter 
E.  Bentley  as  secretary.  The  society  was  organized  for 
the  purpose  of  securing  Sunday  rest  for  actors.  In  a  letter 
to  the  Rev.  F.  J.  C.  Moran,  chairman  of  the  law  committee 
of  the  Alliance  (November  7,  1907)  he  said,  "The  other 
evening  I  had  some  conversation  with  the  Honorable  Seth 
Low,  and,  if  I  understand  him  aright,  he  concurred  in 
thinking  that  the  time  had  come  when  there  might  wisely 
be  some  informal  and  unreserved  consultation  on  the  part 
of  those  representing  the  stage,  the  stage  carpenter,  and  the 
like,  and  the  public  and  the  law. 

"It  is  idle  to  ignore  the  fact  that  we  are  confronted  with  a 
situation  with  which  the  law  is  altogether  inconsistent.  As 
I  hardly  need  say  to  you,  I  am  in  hearty  sympathy  with 
those  of  the  dramatic  profession  who  desire  to  preserve 
Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest ;  but,  if  you  read  the  very  interest- 
ing and  varied  group  of  opinions  published  in  the  New  York 
Times  of  a  few  Sundays  ago,  you  must  have  seen  that  there 
are  other  aspects  to  the  Sunday  question,  in  connection 
with  Sunday  amusements,  than  theirs.  In  other  words, 
there  are  large  numbers  of  persons  so  employed  that  no 


f    PH 

E  & 

C"    o 


THE   PEOPLE'S   BISHOP  363 

half-holiday  on  Saturday  is  possible  for  them,  and  Sunday, 
if  they  are  to  have  any  recreation,  must  include  some  such 
recreation  as  well  as  provision  for  worship.  When,  be- 
sides, you  remember  the  vast  number  of  people,  in  New 
York  and  elsewhere,  who  are  not  Christians  at  all,  even 
nominally,  you  can  realize,  I  think,  that  the  fight  to  observe 
Sunday  in  accordance  with  ancestral  conditions  is  destined, 
inevitably,  to  be  a  losing  fight. 

"Under  these  circumstances,  would  it  not  be  well  to  ask 
the  Governor  of  the  State  to  appoint  a  commission  to  whom 
the  whole  question  of  Sunday  laws  might  be  referred,  with 
the  idea  that  they  should  recommend  such  legislation  as 
might  be  necessary  to  protect  the  Rest  Day,  whether  of 
actors  or  others ;  and  to  secure  what  our  American  Sunday 
already  gives  us. 

"The  whole  question  is  a  very  large  and  intricate  one; 
and  it  is  quite  idle  to  suppose  that  we  can  dispose  of  it  by 
coercing  a  particular  judge  to  give  a  particular  decision, 
because  it  happens  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  terms  of  a 
present  law." 

The  Bishop's  Triennial  Charge  in  1905  had  dealt  with 
the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day.  Nobody  cared  more 
than  he  for  the  maintenance  of  those  "ancestral  conditions" 
of  which  he  spoke  in  his  letter.  "Take  care,"  he  said  in 
his  Charge,  "that  Sunday  is  unlike  any  other  day.  If 
you  wish  to  understand  what  I  mean  —  for  in  this  matter 
there  is  need  of  plain  speaking  —  go  with  me  some  Saturday 
afternoon  to  the  Grand  Central  Depot,  and  see  the  people 
who  are  going  into  the  country  to  spend  Sunday  !  They 
are  on  their  way  to  a  country-house,  which  they  will  find 
full  of  gay  people,  but  not  one  of  whom  on  Sunday  will 
cross  the  threshold  of  a  Church.  They  will,  when  Sunday 
comes,  lounge  in  bed,  or  stroll  out  to  the  golf-links,  or  play 
bridge  in  the  library.  My  brother,  my  sister,  who  art 
host  or  hostess  for  such  a  group,  I  entreat  you  to  redeem 
your  home  for  godlier  usages." 

"Remember,"  he    added,   "that  you  have  a  soul.     Al- 


364  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

most  all  the  aggressive  forces  of  our  modern  life  conspire 
to  help  you  to  forget  it.  When  every  secular  want  has 
been  satisfied  and  every  temporal  triumph  achieved,  there 
still  remains  that  insistent  and  undying  hunger  of  the  soul 
which  Jesus  Christ  can  alone  satisfy,  and  for  which  He 
built  His  house,  and  ordained  His  sacraments,  and  appointed 
His  day,  to  provide." 

At  the  same  time  the  Bishop  took  into  account  the  actual 
confronting  conditions.  "It  is  very  easy  for  my  Puritan 
brother,  whose  conception  of  Sunday  is  at  once  sharp  and 
precise,  to  insist  upon  recovering  the  Sunday,  let  us  say, 
of  our  New  England  forefathers,  and,  to  that  end,  to  de- 
mand that  legislation  shall  so  safeguard  one  day  in  the 
week  that  it  shall  neither  be  profaned  by  traffic  nor  dis- 
figured by  pleasure ;  and  no  sane  man,  however  much  he 
may  be  disposed  to  resent  Sunday  laws  which  invade,  as 
he  affirms,  his  rightful  freedom  of  action,  no  sane  man,  I 
say,  can  be  insensible  to  the  necessity  of  legislation  which 
protects  the  workingman  from  undue  exactions,  and  safe- 
guards some  hours  for  repose  and  meditation.  But  the 
difficulty  with  us  to-day  is  in  securing  some  general  concur- 
rence as  to  the  hours  to  be  thus  segregated,  and  the  ends 
for  which  they  shall  be  guarded.  Once,  and  that  not  so 
long  ago,  we  were  a  tolerably  homogeneous  people,  and  we, 
who  believed  strongly  as  to  the  duty  and  necessity  of  safe- 
guarding Sunday,  could  say  to  the  foreigners  —  I  have  said 
so  myself  in  a  sermon  published  some  thirty  years  ago  — 
'If  you  don't  like  our  Sunday  traditions,  you  can  stay  away 
where  they  will  not  irk  you.  We  mean  to  maintain  them 
as  we  have  inherited  them."  This  position,  he  said,  was 
no  longer  possible. 

"If  the  American  citizen  is  to  rescue  his  Rest  Day,  in 
any  sense,  he  must  recognize  elements  in  the  situation 
which  are  absolutely  new,  and  which  will  demand,  at  any 
rate,  first  of  all,  some  such  unification  of  effort  as  does  not 
now  anywhere  exist  in  this  land.  Of  course,  if  we  are 
determined  to  refuse  to  recognize  facts  as  they  are,  if  we 


THE   PEOPLE'S   BISHOP  365 

are  wedded  to  endeavors  to  reproduce  the  Sunday  of  our 
Puritan  ancestry,  we  can  expend  our  strength  in  a  spectac- 
ular performance  which  will  be  as  pathetic  as  it  is  impotent ; 
and,  most  of  all,  we  can  conspire  with  Sabbath  Committees 
and  other  organizations  which  shall  labor  to  produce  a 
legislation  the  final  effort  of  which  will  be  simply  to  con- 
tribute one  more  illustration  of  our  American  passion  for 
enacting  laws  destined  to  be  treated  only  with  contempt." 

This  statement  was  by  no  means  aggrceable  to  the 
"Sabbath  Committees."  It  contradicted  the  practice  of 
Puritan  prohibition.  It  declared  that  reform  and  law 
must  be  based  on  actual  human  facts,  and  that  legislation 
which  cannot  be  enforced  serves  only  to  tempt  the  people 
into  hypocrisy  and  the  police  to  tyranny.  He  had  already 
said  the  same  thing  in  regard  to  the  "Excise  Law  and 
Sunday  Closing."  The  newspapers,  reporting  an  address 
of  his  before  the  Church  Club  of  New  York  (December,  1901) 
headlined  the  sentence,  "Prohibition  is  a  fraud  and  a  fail- 
ure"; but  the  heart  of  the  speaker's  meaning  was  in  the 
sentence  which  immediately  followed:  " Education,  eleva- 
tion and  transformation  are  the  notes  which  the  Church 
must  learn  to  strike."  He  was  opposed  to  mere  negation. 
He  felt  that  whether  the  matter  in  hand  was  the  protection 
of  Sunday  or  the  prevention  of  the  saloon,  no  merely  de- 
structive measures  would  suffice.  Behind  the  evils  were 
great,  permanent,  and  wholesome  facts  of  human  nature 
which  must  be  discovered  and  taken  into  account,  and  to 
which  the  reformer  must  minister.  He  saw  no  moral 
progress  in  repression  without  construction.  He  had  no 
faith  in  a  leadership  whose  sole  formula  was  "Thou  shalt 
not." 

Thus  he  said  to  the  Church  Club  :  "Here  in  New  York 
we  are  going  to  screw  up  all  the  saloon  doors  on  Sunday 
just  as  we  have  been  doing ;  we  are  going  to  raise  a  race  of 
hypocrites,  just  as  we  have  been  doing ;  we  are  going  to 
furnish  to  the  police  an  opportunity  for  blackmail,  just  as 
we  have  always  done.  No  note,  as  far  as  I  have  heard  from 


366  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

the  people  who  represent  this  policy,  has  been  uttered  yet 
in  favor  of  any  other  policy.  Yet  there  are  other  policies 
which  would  be  worthy  of  a  great  people  and  a  great  prob- 
lem. There  is  one  in  England,  where  capitalists  have 
undertaken  to  acquire  the  properties  representing  the  sale 
of  liquor.  Suppose  that  as  much  brains  and  as  much  time 
had  been  put  into  the  acquisition  of  breweries  on  this  island 
as  has  been  put  into  the  equipment  of  other  great  proper- 
ties. Suppose  that  a  group  of  young  men  should  undertake 
to  do  precisely  what  they  are  doing  in  England  —  that  is 
to  say,  acquire  every  place  that  manufactures  and  sells 
liquor  and  transform  it  into  something  that  may  afford 
not  merely  a  wholesome  and  moral  reform,  but  a  wholesome 
and  innocent  recreation,  a  wholesome  and  social  inter- 
course. Suppose  that  having  inaugurated  such  a  system 
as  this,  a  community  such  as  ours  should  try  to  understand 
the  relations  of  customs  peculiar  to  different  classes  of  people 
to  their  domestic  life,  of  which  great  multitudes  of  us  are 
entirely  ignorant.  Suppose  still  further  that  we  should  try 
to  understand  something  of  the  science  which  stands  behind 
the  whole  drink  question,  and  deal  honestly  with  these 
facts,  which  the  temperance  reformer  has  never  done." 

Bishop  Potter  had  long  endeavored  to  understand  the 
situation  and  to  deal  with  the  facts  honestly.  He  had  in- 
herited from  his  father  a  strong  interest  in  temperance 
reform,  which  his  residence  in  the  Tenth  Ward  had  greatly 
confirmed.  Always  abstemious  in  his  personal  habits,  he 
had  at  one  time  practised  total  abstinence  for  a  number  of 
years  in  order  to  encourage  and  continue  the  reformation 
of  a  man  whom  he  was  trying  to  save  from  the  temptation 
of  drink.  There  was  wine  on  his  table,  on  the  occasion  of 
formal  dinners,  and  he  found  it  under  like  conditions  in 
the  houses  of  his  friends.  It  was  a  detail  of  the  conven- 
tional life.  Sometimes  he  tasted  it ;  often  not.  The 
presence  or  the  absence  of  it  mattered  not  to  him.  He  had 
no  understanding  of  the  dialect  of  vintages.  He  was 
greatly  concerned,  however,  about  the  evils  of  intemper- 


THE    PEOPLE'S   BISHOP  367 

ance.  In  1889,  fifteen  gentlemen,  interested  in  social 
questions,  began  to  meet  for  the  purpose  of  presenting 
papers  of  their  own  composition  for  the  criticism  of  their 
associates,  and  afterwards  publishing  them  in  the  Century 
Magazine  and  the  Forum.  In  1893,  the  number  was  en- 
larged, and  the  group  began  to  be  known  as  the  Committee 
of  Fifty.  Bishop  Potter,  who  had  belonged  to  the  smaller 
group,  continued  his  membership  in  the  larger.  The  dis- 
tinguished company  included  Felix  Adler,  James  C.  Carter, 
W.  Bayard  Cutting,  William  E.  Dodge,  W.  R.  Huntington, 
Seth  Low,  John  Graham  Brooks,  Charles  W.  Eliot,  Francis 
G.  Peabody,  Theodore  T.  Hunger,  Charles  Dudley  Warner, 
Carroll  D.  Wright,  Washington  Gladden.  They  applied 
themselves  to  a  study  of  the  drink  problem,  and  in  1897 
published  a  book  on  its  legislative  aspects. 

In  the  course  of  these  studies  Bishop  Potter  examined 
into  the  workings  of  the  Public  House  Trust  Company, 
under  the  presidency  of  Earl  Grey.  It  was  to  this  that  he 
referred  in  the  series  of  suppositions  contained  in  his  Church 
Club  address.  The  Company  were  engaged  in  part,  in  the 
endeavor  "to  arrange  that  every  new  license  in  their  respec- 
tive counties  shall,  wherever  possible,  be  brought  under  the 
management  of  those  who  have  no  interest  whatsoever  in 
promoting  the  consumption  of  alcoholic  liquors."  They 
were  engaged,  also,  in  managing  the  saloons  which  came 
thus  under  their  influence  in  such  a  manner  as  to  diminish 
their  bad  effects,  and  to  make  them  places  where  men  and 
their  families  might  meet  for  decent  recreation. 

In  these  undertakings  the  Company  were  successful. 
Their  reports  contained  detailed  accounts  of  converted 
saloons.  Thus,  of  an  inn  in  the  north  of  England,  they 
said :  "  It  was  formerly  a  public  house  of  the  lowest  sort, 
frequented  by  disreputable  women  and  roughs ;  it  is  now  a 
clean  and  respectable  house,  doing  a  fair  refreshment  and 
non-alcoholic  trade  in  addition  to  beer  and  spirits.  Its 
outside  appearance  is  clean  and  bright,  and  inside  notices 
of  cheap  tea  and  refreshments  are  well  to  the  fore."  And 


368  HENRY    CODMAN    POTTER 

of  the  Kelty  Inn  in  Fifeshire ;  "The  first  thing  I  noticed 
on  entering  the  village  was  the  splendid  bowling-green 
built  out  of  the  profits  of  the  public  house.  It  is  a  well- 
planned,  well-kept  house,  frequented  by  the  better  class  of 
pitman.  There  are  four  other  public  houses  in  Kelty. 
They  have  all  levelled  up  as  to  quality  and  conduct  since 
the  trust  house  opened."  And  like  reports  were  given 
of  a  dozen  other  places.  It  looked  like  a  good  plan,  attested 
by  experience. 

The  Bishop  had  long  accounted  the  conversion  of  the 
saloon  impossible.  Writing  to  Dr.  Rainsford  in  1895,  he 
had  said,  "Forgive  me  if  I  say  frankly  —  your  dream  of  the 
regeneration  or  transformation  of  the  saloon  is  the  wildest 
dream  that  was  ever  dreamed.  I  once  thought  they 
might  be  somehow  redeemed  and  ennobled,  but  I  have  sur- 
rendered that  illusion  as  a  'wild  imagining.'  There  is  one 
path  before  us  in  the  future,  and  that  is  to  destroy  this 
agency  of  the  devil,  that  will  otherwise  destroy  us." 

When,  however,  W.  Bayard  Cutting,  and  R.  Fulton  Cut- 
ting, and  Herbert  E.  Parsons  and  E.  R.  L.  Gould  proposed  to 
stand  behind  Joseph  Johnson,  Jr.,  in  trying  a  part  of  Earl 
Grey's  plan  in  New  York,  Bishop  Potter  was  interested,  as 
he  was  in  every  endeavor  to  do  good.  When  they  asked 
him  to  come  over  from  Cooperstown,  on  August  2d,  1904, 
and  say  a  word  at  the  opening  of  the  Subway  Tavern,  he 
consented.  He  briefly  addressed  the  assembled  company 
of  philanthropists  and  curious  neighbors. 

"Mr.  Blaustein, "  he  said,  "has  told  us  of  a  section  of 
the  city  on  the  east  side  where  there  are  few  saloons.  It 
contains  as  many  people  as  Syracuse  or  Buffalo,  and  yet 
you  may  walk  a  long  way  in  it  without  seeing  a  saloon. 
This  is  because  they  have  that  which  takes  the  place  of  the 
saloon  —  the  cafe  or  tavern,  where  a  man  can  take  the 
members  of  his  family. 

"We  have  a  great  community  of  homes  here,  a  multitude 
of  people  who  work  hard  and  live  in  small  rooms.  Whore 
shall  they  go  for  recreation  in  the  evening  aft°r  their  work 


THE    PEOPLE'S   BISHOP  369 

is  done?  You  and  I  may  go  to  our  clubs,  but  their  club 
is  the  saloon.  This  is  the  situation,  whether  we  like  it  or 
not.  The  saloon  is  the  poor  man's  place  of  resort  and 
recreation.  Shall  we  hesitate  to  make  it  better,  if  we  can? 
Shall  we  not  rather  encourage  every  honest  experiment 
which  looks  in  that  direction?" 

Then  the  people  crowded  up  to  shake  hands  with  the 
Bishop.  An  enthusiastic  young  woman  sat  down  at  the 
piano  and  played  the  long-metre  doxology,  and  business 
began  to  be  transacted  at  the  bar. 

For  a  time  the  business  at  the  bar  was  good.  Mr.  John- 
son wrote  presently  to  the  Bishop:  "We  have  about  two 
hundred  working  men  from  the  neighborhood  here  every 
day  at  noon.  Three  saloons  that  were  doing  business  on 
our  block  when  we  started  have  quit.  That  is  rather 
interesting,  is  it  not?"  It  looked  as  if  Earl  Grey's  plan 
might  be  as  successful  in  America  as  in  England. 

The  enterprise  was  generously  advertised.  A  consider- 
able number  of  religious  journals  gave  a  good  deal  of  space 
to  it  for  several  weeks,  —  mostly  by  way  of  abuse.  Many 
professional  temperance  reformers  spoke  of  it  intemper- 
ately.  Sam  Jones,  a  humorous  revivalist,  and  Carrie 
Nation,  who  was  occupied  in  reforming  saloons  with  an 
axe,  jested  upon  it.  The  doxology  was  a  cause  of  particular 
scandal  to  many  sensitive  women,  and  even  strong  men 
were  grieved  at  it.  It  was  commonly  taken  for  granted 
that  Bishop  Potter,  instead  of  being  only  a  friendly  visitor, 
was  the  inventor  of  the  Subway  Tavern,  the  chairman  of 
the  Corporation,  a  heavy  investor  in  the  stock  (which  was 
expected  to  yield  a  dividend  of  five  per  cent),  and  in  general 
the  party  of  the  first  part  in  a  contract  in  which  the  party 
of  the  second  part  was  the  devil.  Some  of  the  more  earnest 
adversaries  told  their  horrified  friends  that  the  bishop  had 
brought  back  an  invoice  of  hard  liquors  with  him  from  his 
last  voyage,  and  these  friends  told  other  friends  that  he  had 
tried,  but  without  success,  to  evade  the  payment  of  the 
customs  duties !  Nothing  was  too  bad,  or  too  false. 

2B 


370  HENRY    CODMAX    POTTER 

Even  so,  the  experiment  was  a  failure.  In  August,  1905, 
Mr.  Johnson  wrote  to  the  Bishop,  "I  am  enclosing  a  state- 
ment given  to  the  press  to-day  which  explains  itself.  I 
regret  more  than  I  can  say  that  your  good  offices  and  sacri- 
fices in  this  connection  have  been  thus  unavailing.  All 
of  us  are  deeply  grateful  to  you. 

"Everything  possible  was  done  for  the  experiment.  The 
deficit  lately  has  been  as  high  as  $100  a  week,  which  made  it 
impracticable  to  continue.  Several  thousand  dollars  above 
the  subscribed  capital  stock  were  thrown  into  the  breach 
without  avail. 

"I  fear  that  a  single  place  of  this  kind  cannot  succeed. 
It  will  require  a  very  large  capital,  like  Earl  Grey's  company, 
in  order  to  make  any  headway.  As  I  have  pointed  out, 
the  utter  disregard  of  the  moral  and  statute  law  on  the 
part  of  our  competitors  makes  a  solitary  effort  like  the  Sub- 
way Tavern  inevitably  futile." 

In  the  notice  given  to  the  newspapers  it  was  stated  that 
Bishop  Potter  had  had  neither  financial  nor  directive  con- 
nection with  the  matter.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  only 
connection  with  it  was  his  encouraging  word  and  presence 
at  the  beginning  of  the  experiment. 

As  for  the  Bishop,  he  took  the  vituperation  of  his  temper- 
ance friends  with  his  usual  serenity,  making  no  public 
comment,  accounting  the  wrhole  matter  as  a  part  of  his 
day's  work.  He  had  long  ago  learned  by  experience  that 
social  experiments,  no  matter  how  well  intended,  are  com- 
monly carried  on  under  more  or  less  stone-throwing  from 
the  by-standers. 

A  footnote  to  this  little  episode  is  furnished  by  Bishop 
Darlington  of  Harrisburg.  At  a  meeting  of  the  legislature 
of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  in  January,  1907,  there  was  a 
debate  on  local  option,  and  a  good  deal  of  strong  feeling 
was  shown  on  either  side.  The  Bishop  and  his  brother 
ministers  of  all  denominations  were  working  with  the  tem- 
perance reformers  to  secure  the  passage  of  the  new  law.  A 
representative  from  Philadelphia,  who  showed  his  foreign 


THE    PEOPLE'S   BISHOP  371 

birth  by  his  broken  English,  defended  the  liquor  interests, 
and  quoted  against  the  Bishop  of  Harrisburg  the  liberal 
position  of  the  Bishop  of  New  York,  "who, "  he  said,  "be- 
lieved that  every  poor  man  should  have  his  beer  and 
whiskey."  He  declared  that  Bishop  Potter  would  never 
vote  for  such  a  sumptuary  law  as  local  option.  Another 
representative,  however,  telegraphed  to  Bishop  Potter  and 
asked  him  to  reply,  stating  his  opinion.  After  the  liquor 
speeches  were  all  delivered,  this  representative  came  to 
the  front  and  read  to  the  joint  meeting  of  the  Senate  and 
the  House  of  Representatives,  and  to  the  crowded  galleries, 
the  ten-word  telegram  which  he  had  just  received  :  "Local 
option  is  fair,  square  and  American.  Pass  the  bill.  Henry 
C.  Potter."  The  applause  lasted  several  minutes,  and  the 
bill  was  passed. 

When  the  Church  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
the  Interests  of  Labor  was  organized,  Dr.  DaCosta,  who 
was  made  chairman,  set  the  note  of  the  work  by  reading 
Bishop  Potter's  Pastoral  Letter  of  1886  on  the  industrial 
situation.  "A  nation,"  said  the  Bishop,  "whose  wealth 
and  social  leadership  are  in  the  hands  of  people  who  fancy 
that  day  by  day,  like  those  of  old,  they  can  'sit  down  to 
eat  and  drink  and  rise  up  to  play/  careless  of  those  who 
earn  the  dividends  that  they  spend  and  pay  the  rents  of 
the  tenement  houses,  that  they  own,  but  too  often  never 
visit  nor  inspect,  has  but  one  doom  before  it,  arid  that  the 
worst."  "I  beg  you,  reverend  brethren,"  he  continued, 
"to  set  these  things  before  your  people  with  great  plainness 
of  speech.  In  New  York  centres  the  capital  that  controls 
the  traffic,  and  largely  the  manufactures,  of  this  new  world. 
In  your  congregations  are  many  of  those  who  control  that 
capital.  In  all  our  parishes  are  people  who  employ  labor, 
or  reap  the  benefits  of  it.  To  these  it  is  time  to  say  that  no 
Christian  man  can  innocently  be  indifferent  to  the  interests 
of  working  men  and  women ;  that  wealth  brings  with  it  a 
definite  responsibility,  first,  to  know  how  best  to  use  it  to 
serve  others  as  ourselves,  and  then,  resolutely  to  set  about 


372  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

doing  it ;  that  luxury  has  its  decent  limits,  and  that  we  in 
this  land  are  in  many  directions  in  danger  of  overstepping 
those  limits ;  that  class-churches  and  class-distinctions  of 
kindred  kinds  have  nearly  destroyed  in  the  hearts  of  many 
of  the  poor  all  faith  in  the  genuineness  of  a  religion  whose 
Founder  declared  'All  ye  are  brethren,'  but  whose  disciples 
more  often  seem  by  their  acts  to  say,  '  Stand  thou  there, ' 
'Trouble  me  not/  when  their  brethren  remind  them  not 
merely  of  their  manifold  needs  but  of  their  just  rights." 

Organized  in  this  spirit,  the  Association  proceeded  to 
study  the  social  situation  and  to  contribute,  according  to 
its  opportunity,  to  the  betterment  of  it.  After  some  years, 
Bishop  Potter,  who  had  counselled  it  from  the  beginning, 
became  its  president.  He  spoke  often  at  its  meetings, 
and  directed  many  of  its  undertakings.  "I  hope, "  he  wrote 
in  a  letter,  "that  the  clergy  will  endeavor  to  understand 
both  sides,  and  will  be  brave  enough  to  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  win  popular  applause  by  ignoring  the  fact  that  in 
attempting  to  harmonize  the  conflicting  claims  of  labor  and 
capital,  it  must  first  be  recognized  that  there  are  faults 
and  evils  on  both  sides.  There  is  a  French  proverb  which 
says,  'The  absent  are  always  wrong,'  and  the  tendency  of 
popular  meetings  in  the  interest  of  particular  classes  is  to 
misstate  or  overstate  the  case." 

These  were  the  principles  upon  which  he  himself  pro- 
ceeded. In  1893,  the  Association  organized  a  committee 
of  mediation  and  conciliation.  The  members  represented 
labor,  capital  and  the  public.  Bishop  Potter  was  chairman. 
They  sent  out  a  circular  letter  to  employers  and  labor 
unions,  offering  their  services.  The  offer  was  again  and 
again  accepted.  The  Painters  and  Decorators  Union 
settled  a  difference  by  their  means.  They  stopped  a  series 
of  "cut-throat  strikes"  between  Electrical  Workers  Union 
No.  3,  and  Electrical  Workers  Union  No.  5.  They  success- 
fully arbitrated  a  difficulty  about  the  rate  of  wages  in  the 
marble  trade  of  New  York ;  both  sides  met  night  after 
night  at  the  Bishop's  house.  They  decided  a  grave  dispute 


THE  PEOPLE'S  BISHOP  373 

between  the  men  and  the  masters  in  the  lithographic  in- 
dustry, the  employers  and  the  employees  agreeing  to  leave 
the  whole  matter  to  Bishop  Potter.  "I  remember/'  says 
Dr.  Van  Allen,  "one  night  in  Cooper  Union  when  a  vast 
audience  cheered  at  the  name  of  Henry  C.  Potter,  realizing, 
perhaps  for  the  first  time,  what  he  really  was  to  them." 

In  1900,  the  National  Civic  Federation  was  established, 
"to  provide  for  study  and  discussion  of  questions  of  national 
import,  affecting  either  the  foreign  or  domestic  policy  of 
the  United  States,  to  aid  in  the  crystallization  of  the  most 
enlightened  public  sentiment  of  the  country  in  respect 
thereto,  and,  when  desirable,  to  promote  necessary  legisla- 
tion in  accordance  therewith."  Capital,  labor  and  the 
public  were  represented  in  the  membership  of  the  Federa- 
tion. Bishop  Potter  was  among  those  chosen  in  behalf 
of  the  public,  and  was  an  active  member  of  the  Committee 
on  Conciliation  and  Mediation. 

The  General  Convention  of  1901  appointed  a  Joint  Com- 
mission on  the  Relations  of  Labor  and  Capital,  "first,  to 
study  carefully  the  aims  and  purposes  of  the  labor  organiza- 
tions of  our  country ;  second,  in  particular,  to  investigate 
the  causes  of  industrial  disturbances,  as  these  may  arise; 
and  third,  to  hold  themselves  in  readiness  to  act  as  arbitra- 
tors, should  their  services  be  desired,  between  the  men  and 
their  employers,  with  a  view  to  bring  about  mutual  concilia- 
tion and  harmony  in  the  spirit  of  the  Prince  of  Peace." 
The  suggestion  came  from  Dr.  McKim  of  Washington,  who 
further  suggested  that  Bishop  Potter  should  be  the  chair- 
man. The  Commission  reported  to  the  Convention  of 
1904,  and  the  Pastoral  letter  of  the  House  of  Bishops  for 
that  year,  written  by  Bishop  Potter,  dealt  at  length  with 
the  industrial  situation.  At  the  General  Convention  of 
1907,  action  was  taken,  under  Bishop  Potter's  influence, 
for  the  formation  of  local  Social  Service  Committees  in 
the  various  dioceses  of  the  Church. 

He  was  the  people's  bishop.  His  supreme  concern,  in 
public  and  in  private,  was  to  bring  the  rich  and  the  poor 


374  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

into  vital  and  fraternal  relationship.  His  ideal  of  the  Church, 
as  he  expressed  it  in  precept  and  in  his  own  example,  was 
conceived  in  terms  of  social  sympathy  and  helpfulness.  He 
believed  in  a  ministering  Church.  He  saw  in  its  history 
the  gradual  fulfilment  of  "a  divine  purpose,  beating  down 
the  barriers  that  divide  man  from  man,  and  race  from 
race,  and  hastening  the  time  when  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
shall  mean  no  less  than  the  Brotherhood  of  all  His  chil- 
dren." 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE   FINISHED   COURSE 
1908 

THE  Bishop  went  abroad  in  1905,  after  the  meeting 
of  the  Diocesan  Convention.  In  October,  in  Scotland,  at 
the  University  of  St.  Andrews',  he  made  an  address  and 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws.  In  York 
and  in  Canterbury  he  preached  sermons. 

A  representative  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  found  him  in 
London,  at  St.  James's,  Hamstead-road,  and  noticed  the 
careful  clearness  of  his  enunciation,  and  his  quiet,  conversa- 
tional appeal  to  the  attention  of  every  auditor.  "  Even  the 
smallest  child  in  the  gallery  could  understand  every  word." 
"  Both  in  feature  and  in  bearing,"  said  the  Daily  Chronicle, 
"  he  reminds  one  curiously  of  our  own  Lord  Chief  Justice." 
To  the  Christian  Commonwealth  his  personal  appearance 
recalled  Bishop  Samuel  Wilberforce,  and  the  dignified  and 
gracious  prelates  of  the  mid- Victorian  period. 

These  observers  perceived  in  him  the  indefinable  quality 
of  distinction.  He  had  what  is  called  "  presence."  In  any 
company,  however  notable,  he  was  a  marked  person. 
Strangers  who  did  not  know  his  name  pointed  him  out  one 
to  another  as  a  man  of  evident  position  and  importance. 
He  fulfilled  in  this  regard  Emerson's  description  of  the  great 
man,  whose  greatness  we  recognize,  without  waiting  to  hear 
him  speak  or  act,  by  his  appearance.  "With  all  his  pa- 
tience and  kindness  and  sympathy,"  says  one  who  knew  him 
intimately,  "  no  one  could  be  —  and  probably  no  one  ever 
thought  of  being  —  unduly  familiar  with  him.  At  the  same 
time  there  was  that  about  him  which  invited  approach. 

375 


376  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

Even  the  humblest  persons  came  to  him  confident  of  his 
kindness,  and  were  received  by  him  with  friendly  interest, 
without  condescension,  and  without  suggestion  of  weariness." 
This  was  due  in  part  to  a  constant  love  of  his  neighbor, 
which  was  both  natural  and  Christian ;  and  in  part  to  a 
constant  conquest  of  himself  which  kept  him  humble-minded 
and  sympathetic.  "  He  was  a  man  of  strong  nature,  strong 
will,  strong  and  quick  temper,"  says  the  intimate  friend 
already  quoted,  "  and  he  fought  and  conquered  himself  every 
day  of  his  life."  Thus  his  personality,  instead  of  over- 
powering those  who  came  in  contact  with  him,  stimulated 
them.  They  desired  to  do  their  best,  not  so  much  because 
he  wished  it  as  because  he  inspired  it. 

The  Rev.  Hugh  J.  Chapman,  of  the  Royal  Chapel  of  the 
Savoy,  recalls  a  talk  which  he  had  with  the  Bishop  at  this 
time.  "I  had  been  prepared,"  he  says,  "to  find  him  'one 
of  the  foremost  citizens  of  America,'  as  described  to  me  by 
a  leading  prelate  on  this  side,  nor  did  my  experience  fall 
short  of  the  treat  to  which  I  looked  forward.  The  strong- 
est impression  which  remains  with  me  of  our  deeply  inter- 
esting conversation  is  the  realism  and  intense  simplicity  of 
the  Bishop,  who  counted  the  heart  as  the  most  effective 
and  lasting  factor  in  religion.  In  spite  of  the  position 
which  he  occupied,  he  appeared  to  regard  both  money  and 
office  as  incidental  and  even  hindrances  to  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Cross  which  was  to  him  the  key  of  the  situation. 
I  recall  how  he  spoke  of  the  poor  with  special  affection, 
and  found  in  their  courage  and  mutual  kindness  more  of 
the  true  gospel  than  was  to  be  met  with  in  the  ecclesiastically 
minded,  or  in  carefully  planned  institutions  however  well 
provided  with  funds.  He  held  that  systems  are  valuable 
only  as  far  as  they  express  the  spirit  of  love,  which  is  the 
heart  of  the  whole  matter." 

From  London  the  Bishop  went  to  Paris.  December, 
January  and  a  part  of  February  he  spent  in  Egypt.  In 
March  he  was  in  charge  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  in  Rome. 
Holy  Week  and  Easter  he  spent  in  Dresden. 


THE    FINISHED    COURSE  377 

The  Annual  Address  of  1906  made  reference  again  to 
the  position  of  men  in  holy  orders  who  find  themselves 
in  perplexity  as  to  the  faith  of  the  church.  The  Bishop 
quoted  from  his  Pastoral  Letter.  "If  one  finds,  whatever 
his  place  or  office  in  the  church,  that  he  has  lost  hold  upon 
her  fundamental  verities,  then,  in  the  name  of  common 
honesty,  let  him  be  silent  or  withdraw."  This,  he  explained, 
however,  was  to  be  applied  not  to  temporary  but  to  per- 
manent doubt.  Even  so,  "there  are  beliefs  which  are,  so 
to  speak,  in  suspensu,  and  others  concerning  which  various 
opinions  may  be  held,  and  have  obtained,  in  all  ages  of  the 
church."  The  faith  which  is  formulated  in  the  Apostles' 
and  the  Nicene  Creeds  he  held  to  be  fundamental.  In  the 
field  thus  covered  he  who  would  free  the  church  from  error 
must  do  so  from  without,  not  from  within. 

"It  is  impossible,"  said  the  Bishop,  "in  the  minds  of 
people  who  hold  fast  to  the  principles  of  common  honesty, 
to  respect  either  the  consistency  or  the  integrity  of  one  who 
eats  the  church's  bread,  accepts  the  church's  dignities, 
enjoys  the  church's  honors,  and  impugns  the  church's  faith. 
If  he  must  assail  her  beliefs,  then  the  dictate  of  ordinary  up- 
rightness would  plainly  seem  to  be  that  he  must,  first  of 
all,  withdraw  from  a  fellowship  to  whose  fundamental 
beliefs  he  cannot  candidly  assent." 

This  somewhat  peremptory  dealing  with  a  delicate  prob- 
lem offended  the  friends  of  one  clergyman  who  was  at  that 
moment  under  accusation  of  heresy,  and  troubled  others 
who  resented  the  implication  that  "the  church's  bread"  may 
be  rightly  eaten  only  by  those  who  are  satisfied  with  the 
existing  church.  It  seemed  to  them  that  the  best  allegiance 
to  the  church  requires  such  faithful  treatment  of  discovered 
error  as  shall  keep  the  creed  consistent  with  the  truth. 
They  remembered  how  St.  Stephen  stayed  in  the  church 
till  he  was  driven  out  with  stones,  and  how  St.  Athanasius 
accepted  the  church's  dignities  and  enjoyed  the  church's 
honors  while  he  impugned  with  all  his  might  that  which 
several  synods  of  bishops  declared  to  be  the  church's  faith. 


378  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

In  the  Annual  Address  of  1907  he  reversed  the  position 
which  he  had  held  in  1889  concerning  the  Provincial  System. 
He  was  glad  that  the  last  General  Convention  had  failed 
to  adopt  it.  "One  need  not  be  indifferent  or  insensible/' 
he  said,  "to  the  advantages  of  such  a  system  to  recognize 
its  possible  mischiefs.  But  they  are  precisely  those  which 
threaten  the  Republic ;  and,  for  the  same  reason,  are  to 
be  dreaded  and  shunned.  Our  common  peril  in  this  land 
is  from  the  growth  of  sectionalism,  and  the  Provincial 
System,  whatever  incidental  conveniences  it  might  bring 
with  it,  menaced  our  ecclesiastical  unity,  and  was  destined 
inevitably  to  isolate  ' localism'  in  the  Church  and  to  empha- 
size local  idiosyncrasies.  No  emergency  has  as  yet  arisen 
demanding  such  a  form  of  relief  from  present  inconvenience, 
and  no  prospect  of  relief  from  possible  inconveniences  in 
the  future  could  at  all  warrant  the  introduction  of  such 
cumbrous,  pretentious  and  disintegrating  machinery." 

The  Address,  however,  touched  the  familiar  notes  of  social 
righteousness  and  the  essential  importance  of  the  spiritual 
life  with  unabated  strength.  It  concluded  with  words 
which,  as  the  event  proved,  were  the  last  which  he  was  to 
speak  to  his  clergy  and  people  in  convention  assembled : 
"And  now,  brethren,  I  commend  you  to  God  and  to  the 
Word  of  His  grace.  May  you  be  built  up  in  His  most  holy 
faith  and  fear,  and  finally  have  vouchsafed  to  you  an  inheri- 
tance among  all  them  that  arc  sanctified." 

He  went  about,  as  usual,  speaking  and  preaching,  though 
occasionally  the  brevity  of  a  lecture  surprised  and  disap- 
pointed an  audience.  He  presided,  week  by  week,  over 
public  assemblies  and  at  meetings  of  boards  of  trustees. 
He  made  his  customary  visitations  to  the  country  parishes. 
In  Carnegie  Hall  in  January,  1908,  he  was  the  moderator  of 
a  meeting  in  the  interests  of  constitutional  government  in 
Russia.  He  spoke  in  the  hall  of  the  Horticultural  Society 
in  Brooklyn,  and  before  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation in  West  Twenty-Third  Street.  In  February,  he 
counselled  the  Woman's  Press  Club,  delivered  an  address 


THE   FINISHED   COURSE  379 

at  Cooper  Union,  and  spoke  in  the  Metropolitan  Temple. 
In  March,  he  was  heard  by  the  alumni  of  the  University  of 
Michigan,  by  the  churchmen  of  Columbia  University,  and 
by  the  West  Side  Ministers'  Association.  In  April,  he 
presided  at  a  meeting  of  the  Social  Service  Committee. 
He  preached  on  Easter  Day,  according  to  his  long-estab- 
lished custom,  at  the  Church  of  the  Epiphany.  This  was 
his  last  sermon. 

On  May  15,  he  sent  a  letter  to  each  of  the  clergy  of  the 
diocese:  "His  Grace  the  Most  Reverend  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  has  summoned  the  Lambeth  Conference  for 
1908  to  convene  at  Canterbury  on  Saturday,  July  4th,  and 
it  had  been  my  purpose  to  sail  from  this  port  on  June  4th 
to  obey  that  summons ;  but  a  sharp  illness,  from  which  I 
am  slowly  recovering,  has  left  me,  my  physicians  think, 
with  scarcely  sufficient  strength  for  this  voyage,  and  I  have 
abandoned  it."  He  placed  the  diocese,  during  Bishop 
Greer's  absence  at  the  Conference,  in  the  charge  of  Bishop 
Brooke  of  Oklahoma.  "May  God  have  you  in  His  holy 
keeping,  and  vouchsafe  His  abundant  blessing  to  yourself 
and  your  work,  prays  yours  affectionately,  Henry  C.  Potter." 

Thus  he  took  his  leave,  in  the  midst  of  his  labors.  On  the 
cover  of  the  blank-book  in  which  he  was  keeping  his  official 
journal  was  found  pasted  a  clipping  from  the  Missionary 
Review:  "It  is  told  of  Thomas  &  Kempis  that  once,  during 
his  student  days,  his  teacher  asked  the  class,  'What 
passage  of  Scripture  conveys  the  sweetest  description  of 
heaven?'  One  answered,  'There  shall  be  no  more  sorrow 
there  ; '  another,  '  There  shall  be  no  more  death  ; '  another, 
'They  shall  see  His  face  ;'  but  Thomas,  who  was  the  young- 
est of  all,  said  :  'And  His  servants  shall  serve  Him." 

As  he  lay  ill  in  Cooperstown  early  in  July,  the  village 
trustees  directed  that  the  Fourth  should  be  celebrated 
without  the  usual  accompaniments  of  noise,  that  he  might 
not  be  disturbed.  He  died  on  the  21st,  seventy-four  years 
old. 

"It  has  been  a  great  source  of  happiness  to  me,  as  it 


380  HENRY   CODMAN   POTTER 

must  have  been  to  you,"  said  a  friend,  writing  to  Mrs. 
Potter,  "to  see  how  generally  the  Bishop's  life  and  character 
have  been  understood  and  appreciated.  Such  comments 
as  I  have  seen  in  the  press  have  been  uniformly  good  and 
singularly  just.  We  have  all  of  us  felt,  more  or  less,  while 
he  was  with  us,  how  fine  and  large  and  genuine  he  was ;  but 
as  we  look  back  upon  his  work  for  both  Church  and  State, 
we  see  clearly  how  unique  a  service  he  rendered  to  both." 
So  said  hundreds  of  affectionate  letters  and  appreciative 
editorials. 

During  the  funeral  in  Cooperstown  all  business  was  sus- 
pended, and  the  men  of  the  village  marched  behind  the 
coffin  to  the  station.  Bishop  Greer  returned  from  abroad 
in  time  for  the  public  funeral  (October  20th)  in  Grace 
Church,  New  York.  The  interment  was  in  the  Cathedral, 
before  the  altar  in  the  crypt.  The  day  of  his  burial  was 
the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  his  consecration. 

"He  was  the  Citizen-Bishop,"  said  the  committee  of 
clergy  appointed  to  prepare  a  memorial.  "Human  life 
appealed  to  him  with  irresistible  force.  Its  problems  and 
questions  were  of  supreme  concern.  His  interest  was  as 
far  as  possible  from  any  thought  of  condescension  or  patron- 
age. He  did  not  force  himself  to  show  this  interest.  It  was 
not  the  question  of  a  duty  to  wrhich  he  bowed  himself,  but 
rather  the  vital  movement  of  his  own  nature.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  world  in  the  best  sense,  and  therefore  touched 
the  world  with  an  ease  and  freedom,  a  sense  of  mastery 
and  knowledge,  a  bright  and  eager  interest  in  all  its  life, 
that  made  him  above  all  else  the  citizen.  He  was  the  citizen 
before  he  became  the  ecclesiastic.  He  was  the  Citizen- 
Bishop." 

The  Memorial  quoted  from  what  was  said  of  him  by  Dr. 
Battershall :  "He  had  insight,  forecast,  tact,  knowledge  of 
men,  genial  touch  of  men,  sympathy  with  his  period,  with 
American  methods  and  ideals.  He  was  keen  to  catch  the 
human  appeal  from  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  He  had 
that  audacity,  faith,  courage,  and  faculty  for  organization, 


THE   FINISHED   COURSE  381 

that  give  leadership.  In  all  his  word  and  deed  he  showed 
his  profound  sense  of  the  divine  mission  of  the  Church  in 
a  world  that  is  perpetually  confronting  it  with  new  issues 
and  supplying  it  with  new  implements.  Simply  and 
strongly  he  carried  his  manhood  into  his  office.  He  was 
better  than  faultless ;  he  was  human ;  every  inch  a  bishop, 
with  an  old-time  courtliness,  noblesse  oblige  and  spiritual 
fatherhood ;  every  inch  a  man,  with  the  loyalties  and  loves 
of  an  honest,  deep-hearted  man." 

The  Committee  continued,  expressing  themselves  in  the 
words  of  their  chairman,  Dr.  Huntington :  '  It  is  much  to 
any  diocese  to  have  had  a  leader  who  so  thoroughly  knew 
his  age,  and  who  above  all  believed  that  the  greatest  thing 
that  his  clergy  can  do  is  also  to  know  their  age,  and  to  serve 
it  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ. 

"Prayer  was  to  him  the  deepest  reality  of  his  life.  No 
one  who  ever  heard  him  offer  prayer  without  book  or  page, 
as  he  so  often  did,  will  ever  forget  the  perfect  form,  and  the 
searching,  simple  words  that  fell  from  his  lips.  As  he  said 
of  another  great  bishop,  so  of  him  may  we  say,  that  'up  out 
of  the  narrower  round  in  which  he  faithfully  walked,  from 
time  to  time  he  climbed,  and  came  back  bathed  in  a  heavenly 
light.'" 

The  Memorial  concluded,  —  and  this  story  of  his  life 
can  have  no  more  fit  conclusion  —  "Unto  the  almighty  and 
ever-living  God  we  yield  most  high  praise  and  hearty 
thanks  for  the  wonderful  grace  and  virtue  declared  in  all 
His  saints,  who  have  been  the  chosen  vessels  of  His  grace, 
and  the  lights  of  the  world  in  their  several  generations  ;  but 
here  and  to-day  especially  for  His  servant,  Henry  Codman 
Potter,  true  prophet,  true  priest,  true  bishop,  to  the  glory 
of  God  the  Father." 


INDEX 


Amory,  James  S.,  letter  to,  83. 
Anathema  within  limits,  294. 
Archdeaconries,  210. 

Baptist,  letter  to,  217,  218. 
Batten,  Dr.,  letter  to,  353-355. 
Battershall,  Dr.,  quoted,  380. 
Benedict,  Sarah,  13,  14;    Sarah  Maria, 

8,  9. 
Bishopric,     of     Central     Pennsylvania, 

81,  82;    of  Massachusetts,  83-85:    of 

Iowa,  92. 
Brent,  Bp.,  325. 

Briggs,  Dr.,  ordination  of,  301-312. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  26,  27,  32,  61,  67,  260, 

261. 

Buel,  Dr.,  135,  143,  144. 
Bull  Run,  commemoration  of,  288. 

Cambridge    University,   confers   degree, 

222  ;   select  preacher  at,  292. 
Carey,     Joseph,     correspondence     with, 

257-259. 
Cathedral,  sermon  on,  198  ;  letter  about, 

199-203;      comments     on,     204-206; 

site    chosen,    206 ;     cornerstone    laid, 

273,  274;    Easter  gift  for,  290,  291; 

progress,  298. 
Century  Club,  268. 
Chapman,  Hugh  J.,  376. 
Church  Congress,   beginning  of,  90-92  ; 

at  Minneapolis,  315. 
Churchmanship,  comprehensive,  20,  218. 
Clark,  Bp.,  237. 

Clark,  Mrs.  Alfred  Corning,  353. 
Clendenin,  F.  W.,  304,  305. 
Cleveland,  Grover,  238. 
Clubs,  268. 
Cooperstown,  379. 
Council,  Federate,  213-215. 
Coxe,  Bp.,  82,  181,  240. 
Crary,  Dr.,  360. 
Creeds,  revision  of,  118,  119. 
Croker,  Richard,  323. 
Crosby,  Howard,  338. 
Cutting,  R.  Fulton,  letter  to,  269-272. 

Da  Costa,  B.  F.,  presents  Dr.  Newton, 
135,  142,  143;  presents  Dr.  Briggg, 
305-307 ;  312,  371. 


Darlington,  Bp.,  370. 
Deaconesses,  76-79. 
Denys,  F.  Ward,  282. 
Depew,  Chauncey,  225,  234. 
Dix,  Morgan,  124,  125. 
Doane,  Bp.,  274. 
Doggett,  Dr.,  56. 
Donald,  Dr.,  311. 
Douglas,  G.  W.,  3 17. 
Ducey,  Fr.,  283,  284. 

"East  of  To-day  and  To-morrow,"  The, 

323. 

Eastburn,  Bp.,  61,  62. 
Eastside  House,  277. 
Eggleston,  Edward,  235. 
Egypt,  condition  of,  in  1875,  97. 
Episcopal  Academy,  21. 

Faith  and  order,  251-255. 
Field,  Henry  M.,  295. 
Fisher,  Professor,  311. 
Freeman,  James  E.,  360. 

"Gates  of  the  East,"  95-100. 

Geer,  Mrs.  Katherine  C.,  letter  to,  164, 
165. 

Gettysburg,  after  battle  of,  45 ;  dedica- 
tion of  monument  at,  288. 

Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  letter  to,  277. 

Goddard,  R.  H.  I.,  letter  to,  261. 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  235. 

Goold,  Edgar  H.,  361. 

Gorton,  Samuel,  3,  4. 

Grace  Chapel,  93,  94,  100,  101 ;  dedica- 
tion of,  290. 

Grace  House,  74,  81,  101,  110,  111; 
by-the-Sea,  109. 

Grafton,  Dr.,  213,  214. 

Grant,  Percy  Stickney,  314,  315,  323. 

Greene  Foundation,  60,  61. 

Greensburg,  ministry  in,  34-41. 

Greer,  Bp.,  356,  357. 

Grosvenor,  William  Mercer,  352,  356. 

Hare,  George  Emlen,  21. 
Harrison,  Hall,  311. 
Hawaiian  Islands,  316-319. 
Hearst,  W.  R.,  letter  to,  340-342. 
Holland,  Dr.,  307,  311. 


383 


384 


INDEX 


Holy  Cross,  Order  of,  146-165. 
Huntington,  Bp.,  129,  310,  311. 
Huntington,.Fr.,  146-149,  162,  163. 
Huutington,    William    Reed,    121,    306, 
310,377,381. 

Intemperance,  study  of,  367. 
Iowa,  bishopric  of,  92. 

Jacobs,  Eliza  Rogers  (Mrs.  Potter),  23, 

38,  39,  339,  340. 
Jacobs,  Mrs.  Clara,  23. 
Johnson,  Joseph,  Jr.,  368,  369,  370. 
Junior  Century  Club,  111. 

Kane  Lodge,  286. 
Keyser,  Miss,  361,  362. 

Labor  and  capital,  373. 

Labor,  advancement  of  interest  of,  371. 

Lambeth  Conference,  292. 

"Law  and  Loyalty,"  260. 

Lectures,  Bedell,  343 ;    Dodge,  343-348. 

Lee,   Bp.,   his  Holy  Cross  letters,   150- 

158. 

Lewis,  John  Vaughan,  141. 
Low,  Seth,  271,  362. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  235. 
Lowell,  R.  T.  S.,  14,  15. 

Mackay-Smith.   Bp.,   sermon   at   conse- 
cration of,  349,  350. 
MacQueary,  Howard,  249,  250,  252. 
MacVeagh,  Wayne,  236. 
"Man,  Men  and  their  Masters,"  343. 
Marble  workers,  strike  of,  289. 
Mason,  Robert  M.,  83. 
Masonry,  269. 

Massachusetts,  bishopric  of,  83-85. 
May,  Dr.,  28. 
Meath,  Countess  of,  243. 
Mediation  and  conciliation,   372. 
Mills  Hotel,  address  at  opening  of,  293. 
Mission,  the  Advent,  182-191. 
Mont  Alto,  31. 

Moran,  F.  J.  C.,  letter  to,  362,  363. 
Morton,  Levi  P.,  81. 
Muhlenburg,  Dr.,  3-3,  35,  76. 
Myrick,  H.  L.,  letter  to,  275,  276. 

Nativity,  Church  of,  119. 
Nelson,  George  F.,  quoted,  7.3,  218,  220. 
Newton,   R.   Heber,   13.5-145,   160. 
Nicholson,  Bp.,  307. 
Norton,    Charles   Eliot,    234. 
Nott,    the    Connecticut    family,    7,    8 ; 
Eliphalet,  8,  9;    Sarah  Maria,  10,  13. 

Ohio  Society,  speech  at  dinner  of,  294. 
Oxford  University  confers  degree,  263. 


Packard,  Dr.,  28,  129. 

Paddock,  Bp.,  85. 

Paddock,  Robert  L.,  326,  327. 

Palestine,  impressions  of,  97,  100. 

Pastoral  Letter  of  Six  Bishops,  263-268. 

Pavilion,  Nicholas,  241. 

Peck,  John  Hudson,  quoted,  44,  47,  52, 
53. 

Pennsylvania,  Central,  bishopric  of,  81, 
82  ;  University  of,  degree,  342. 

Phelps,  Edward  J.,  237. 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Harvard, 
244,  245. 

Philippines,  problem  of,  313-325. 

Pierce,  C.  C.,  321,  322. 

Pope,  the,  296,  297. 

Potter,  Alonzo,  10,  11,  14,  15-18,25,  26. 

Potter,  Henry  Codman,  Potter  an- 
cestors, 2-7  ;  Nott  ancestors,  7-9  ; 
birth,  11;  brothers  and  sister,  13; 
in  St.  George's,  Schenectady,  12 ; 
tutored  by  Mr.  Lowell,  14 ;  con- 
verted, 22,  24  ;  engaged  to  be  married, 
23 ;  at  Virginia  Seminary,  24-33 ; 
ordained  deacon,  33  ;  in  Greensburg, 
36-41  ;  married,  38  ;  ordained  priest, 
41  ;  in  Troy,  43-57 ;  visits  Gettys- 
burg, 45  ;  Thanksgiving  sermon,  47  ; 
Secretary  of  House  of  Bishops,  58,  59  ; 
in  Boston,  60-67 ;  called  to  Grace 
Church,  66  ;  organizing  the  parish,  71  ; 
habits  of  order,  73  ;  "Sisterhoods  and 
Deaconesses,"  77-79 ;  considered  for 
bishop  of  Central  Pennsylvania,  81 ; 
considered  for  bishop  of  Massa- 
chusetts, 83 ;  discusses  problems  of 
charity,  86-89 ;  relations  to  Church 
Congress,  90-92 ;  elected  bishop  of 
Iowa,  92;  "Gates  of  the  East,"  95- 
100 ;  sermons  on  social  service,  102- 
115;  on  American  Sunday,  104,  105; 
completes  ten  years  at  Grace,  106 ; 
Grace  House,  110;  methods  of  sermon 
making,  115;  close  of  rectorship,  120- 
122  ;  elected  bishop  of  New  York,  124  ; 
consecrated  bishop,  126-128 ;  ad- 
dresses to  churchwomen,  131-133; 
case  of  Dr.  Newton,  135-145;  Order 
of  Holy  Cross,  146-165 ;  case  of  Mr. 
Ritchie,  166-179;  on  ministerial  sup- 
port, 180,  181  ;  on  associate  missions, 
181,  182  ;  pastoral  on  Advent  Mission, 
184,  1S5;  reviews  Advent  Mission, 
1SS-191  ;  conducts  retreats  at  Garri- 
son, 192-194;  in  Europe,  195; 
preaches  anniversary  sermon  in  Lam- 
beth Chapel,  195,  190;  becomes 
sole  bishop  of  New  York,  197  ;  letter 
concerning  Cathedral,  199-203 ;  or- 
ganizes archdeaconries,  210;  on 


INDEX 


385 


Federate  Councils,  213,  214;  letter 
about  Dr.  Graf  ton,  215,  216;  letter 
to  a  Baptist,  217,  218;  habits  of 
work,  220,  221 ;  at  Lambeth  Con- 
ference, 221 ;  Cambridge  degree,  222  ; 
sermon  at  Washington  Centennial, 
225-234;  on  the  ideal  bishop,  240- 
242 ;  on  rural  reinforcement,  243, 
244 ;  Phi  Beta  Kappa  orator  at  Har- 
vard, 246,  247  ;  "The  Scholar  and  the 
State,"  245-247;  sermon  on  com- 
prehensive churchmanship,  247-248  ; 
charge  on  faith  and  order,  249-255 ; 
correspondence  with  Dr.  Carey,  256- 
259 ;  sermon  at  consecration  of 
Phillips  Brooks,  260,  261 ;  in  Europe, 
262;  Oxford  degree,  263;  defends 
Pastoral  of  Six  Bishops,  263-268; 
letter  on  New  York  politics,  269-272  ; 
lays  cornerstone  of  Cathedral,  273, 
274 ;  gift  from  clergy,  274-276 ; 
residence  in  Stanton  street,  278-285 ; 
membership  in  clubs,  286 ;  Grand 
Chaplain  in  Masonry,  286,  287; 
representative  position,  287  ;  Gettys- 
burg address,  287,  288 ;  unveiling 
Martin  Memorial  tablet,  288 ;  prayer 
at  dedication  of  Washington  Arch, 
288,  289  ;  umpire  in  marble  workers' 
differences,  289  ;  dedication  of  Grace 
Chapel,  290 ;  a  thousand  Easter 
cards,  290,  291 ;  at  bicentenary  of 
Trinity  Church,  291 ;  select  Preacher 
at  Cambridge,  292  ;  address  at  open- 
ing of  Mills  Hotel,  293 ;  after-dinner 
speaking,  294 ;  on  the  Pope  and 
Anglican  orders,  296,  297 ;  on  sub- 
ordination of  religion,  298 ;  on  ex- 
temporaneous preaching,  299 ;  on 
ritual,  299,  300;  ordination  of  Dr. 
Briggs,  301-312 ;  the  problem  of  the 
Philippines,  314-315;  in  Honolulu, 
316-319;  in  Manila,  319-323 ;  "The 
East  of  To-day  and  To-morrow,"  323  ; 
writes  to  Mayor  Van  Wyck,  328-331 ; 
an  "ecclesiastical  statesman,"  324, 
325 ;  death  of  Mrs.  Potter,  339,  340 ; 
letter  to  W.  R.  Hearst,  340-342; 
lectures  at  Kenyon  College,  343 ; 
lectures  at  Yale,  343-348 ;  preaches 
at  consecration  of  Dr.  Vinton,  349 ; 
preaches  at  consecration  of  Dr. 
Mackay-Smith,  349,  350  ;  a  page  from 
the  official  diary,  350,  352 ;  breaks 
down,  and  goes  abroad,  352,  353 ; 
second  marriage,  353 ;  asks  for 
episcopal  relief,  353-355 ;  elec- 
tion of  Dr.  Greer,  356,  357;  in  the 
country  parishes,  358,  359 ;  firemen 
and  policemen,  361,  362;  Actors' 

2r 


Church  Alliance,  362 ;  charge  on 
Sunday  observance,  363-365  ;  studies 
problems  of  intemperance,  365-367 ; 
examines  Public  House  Trust  plans, 
367,  368 ;  speaks  at  opening  of 
Subway  Tavern,  368,  369  ;  telegram 
on  local  option,  370,  371  ;  interest  in 
problems  of  labor,  371-373;  per- 
sonality, 375 ;  Pastoral  Letter  on 
keeping  the  faith,  377 ;  illness  and 
death,  379;  tribute  of  clergy,  380, 
381. 

Potter,  Horatio,  123,  130,  197. 

Potter,  Israel,  5,  6. 

Potter,  Joseph,  1,  7. 

Potter,  Robert,  2-4. 

Potter,  brothers  of  H.  C.  P.,  13,  117,  118. 

Potter,  from  Robert  to  Joseph,  5-7. 

Preaching,  thoughts  on,  65,  66 ;  prep- 
aration for,  115;  extemporaneous, 
298,  299. 

Provincial  System,  378. 

Public  House  Trust,  367,  368. 

Rainsford,  Dr.,  368. 

Restarick,  Bp.,  325. 

Retreats,  at  Garrison,  191-194. 

Richards,    Charles   A.    L.,    quoted,    26, 

27,  30,  32,  33,  36,  38,  39,  53,  54,  159. 
Richey,  Dr.,  167,  168. 
Ritchie,  Arthur,  166-179. 
Ritual,  test  of,  299,  300. 
Russia,  Emperor  of,  300. 

"Scholar  and  the  State,"  The,  254. 

Schurz,  Carl,  237. 

Scott,  Thomas  A.,  40. 

Secretary,  House  of  Bishops,  58-60. 

Sermon-making,  115. 

"Sermons  of  the  City,"  112-115. 

Sisterhoods,  76-79. 

"Sisterhoods  and  Deaconesses,"  78. 

Slavery,  20,  32,  48,  49. 

Smith,  Cornelius  B.,  307. 

Smith,  Bp.,  128,  334. 

Snively,  T.  A.,  51. 

Sparrow,  Dr.,  28. 

Speeches,  after-dinner,  294. 

Springfield,  bishop  of,  174,  175,  176. 

Stanton  St.  Mission,  279-285. 

Stewart,  Miss  Sally,  30-31. 

Subway  Tavern,  368-370. 

Sunday  observance,  104,  105,  363-365. 

Tait,  Archbp.,  108,  109. 
Tavern,  Subway,  368-370. 
Taylor,  Thomas  House,  69,  70. 
Thanksgiving    Day    sermon,    1865,    47; 

1886,  63-65. 
Thompson,  Walter,  192,  193. 


386 


INDEX 


Trask,  Spencer,  256,  259. 
Trinity  Church,  bicentenary,  291. 
Trinity  College,  confers  degree,  134. 
Troy,  residence  in,  43-57. 
Turner,  Thornton  F.,  360. 

Union  College,  9,  11,  12,  57,  134,  246, 

247. 

Van  Allen,  Dr.,  373. 

Van  Dyke,  Dr.  Henry,  295. 

Van  Wyck,  Mayor,  letter  to,  328-331 ; 

letter  from,  331,  332. 
Vinton,  Bp.,  sermon  at  consecration  of, 

349. 

Virginia  Theological  Seminary,  24-33. 
Vows,   revocable  and  irrevocable,    163- 

165. 

Walter,  W.  H.,  12,  13. 


Ward,  Nathaniel,  2,  4. 

Washington,  anniversary  of  inaugura- 
tion of,  224,  225 ;  address  on  occasion, 
226-234 ;  comments  on  address,  234- 
238 ;  prayer  at  dedication  of  Arch, 
288-289. 

"Waymarks,"260. 

Wayne,  sermon  at,  247-248. 

Welsh,  Herbert,  236. 

Williams,  Bp.,  12,  58,  127,  265. 

Winslow,  William  Copley,  215,  216. 

Wolfe,  Miss  Catherine  Lorillard,  95. 

Woman's  Auxiliary,  76. 

Women  in  church  work,  76-79,  131-133. 

Y.  M.  C.  A.  address,  54-56. 
Yale    University,    confers    degree,    342 ; 
lectures  at,  343-346. 

Zanzibar,  bishop  of,  90. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


IHE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  books 
by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects. 


NEW  EDITIONS   OF  DEAN  HODGES'S  BOOKS 

Christianity  between  Sundays  $1.25 

The  Heresy  of  Cain  $1.25 

The  Battles  of  Peace  $1-25 

Human  Nature  of  the  Saints  $1.25 
The  Year  of  Grace  (2  volumes)             Each  $1.25 

The  Path  of  Life  $1.25 

Cross  and  Passion  $1.00 

In  This  Present  World  $1.25 

Faith  and  Social  Service  $1.25 

Uniformly  bound,  each  12mo 

Dean  George  Hodges  is  one  of  those  gifted  writers  who  makes  of 
religion  a  very  practical  thing.  He  neither  tires  the  reader  with  dis- 
cussions of  dogmas  nor  of  creeds,  but  as  a  critic  once  put  it,  "  gets 
down  to  business  in  a  businesslike  fashion."  His  books  which  have 
previously  been  published  and  are  known  to  many  men  and  women 
are  reissued  now  in  new  editions  bound  uniformly  in  blue  cloth. 
Individually  and  collectively  they  demonstrate  once  more  the  truth  of 
the  Christian  Register's  comment  that  "  Dr.  Hodges  is  an  inspired 
apostle  of  the  new  philanthropy."  The  intimate  talks  in  the  volumes 
are  on  themes  of  vital  interest  to  every  one  living  in  this  twentieth 
century.  They  contain  possibilities  of  application  so  pointed  and 
evident  that  "  they  convey  their  own  instruction  and  their  own  im- 
pulse," to  quote  further  from  the  Christian  Register's  remarks  on  one 
of  the  autnor's  works,  which  may  in  absolute  truth  be  applied  to 
them  all. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


BY  THE   SAME  AUTHOR 

Classbook  of  Old  Testament  History 

BY  GEORGE  HODGES 

Dean  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School,  Cambridge 

Cloth,  izmo,  $1.00 

This  volume,  with  a  simplicity  of  style  that  charms  the  reader,  brings 
the  results  of  the  best  scholarship  of  the  day,  without  any  reference  to 
the  processes,  to  the  general  reader.  Old  Testament  History  is  not 
found  in  the  Bible  as  a  continuous  narrative.  The  author  gives  two 
reasons  why  it  is  necessary  for  the  Old  Testament  to  be  rewritten  for 
the  general  reader,  First,  as  it  stands  it  is  in  two  editions.  "  One 
edition  includes  the  books  from  Genesis  to  Second  Kings.  The  other 
edition  includes  the  books  from  First  Chronicles  to  Nehemiah."  To 
get  the  entire  history  it  is  necessary  to  bring  these  two  series  of  books 
together.  The  second  reason  is  that  there  are  books  of  poetry,  and 
especially  books  of  prophecy,  in  the  Old  Testament,  which  were 
written  in  the  midst  of  the  events  which  historians  narrate  and  these 
books  bring  new  light  to  the  events  the  historians  narrate,  but  they 
are  placed  to  themselves.  Historical  criticism  has  done  an  enormous 
amount  of  keen  critical  work  in  analyzing  and  constructing  the  mate- 
rials. The  result  is  that  to-day  we  can  get  a  pretty  good  idea  of  the 
actual  history  of  the  Hebrews.  This  book  gives  this  history  for  the 
general  reader. 

The  table  of  dates  at  the  close  of  the  book  will  be  found  to  be  most 
useful.  Beginning  two  thousand  years  before  Christ  the  great  dates 
are  given  down  to  the  conquest  of  Syria  and  Palestine  by  Alexander 
the  Great  in  332  B.C.  The  book  will  be  most  useful  to  the  general 
reader,  and  for  classroom  work. 

Everyman's  Religion 

Cloth,  i2tno,  S/.jo 
Macmillan  Standard  Library  Edition,  50  cents 

Underlying  the  many  sects  of  the  Christian  religion  there  are  certain 
fundamental  facts  which  are  sometimes  lost  sight  of  in  the  devotion  to 
a  particular  creed.  The  purpose  of  Dean  Hodges's  book  is  to  present 
these  essential  elements  of  Christian  faith  and  life  in  a  manner  simple, 
unconventional  and  appealing  to  a  man's  common  sense.  The  con- 
clusions which  the  author  arrives  at  are  largely  orthodox,  but  the 
reasoning  makes  no  use  of  the  argument  from  authority. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


BY   THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

The  Episcopal  Church : 

Its  Faith  and  Order 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.25 

This  volume  is  a  concise  statement  of  the  doctrine  and 
discipline  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

It  is  intended  for  three  groups  —  the  younger  clergymen  who 
will  find  in  the  analyses  prefaced  to  the  chapters  material  that 
will  be  valuable  in  their  own  teaching,  members  of  confirmation 
classes  who  will  be  helped  by  the  summaries  which  it  contains, 
and  persons  who  are  desirous  of  knowing  the  doctrine  and  disci- 
pline of  the  Episcopal  Church.  The  volume  embodies  the 
results  of  twenty  years'  experience  in  the  instruction  of  students 
in  the  Episcopal  Theological  School.  In  the  midst  of  many 
natural  differences  of  emphasis  and  opinion  those  positions  are 
indicated  in  this  work  in  which  most  members  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  are  substantially  agreed. 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

I.     THE  BIBLE 3 

II.    THE  PRAYER  BOOK 21 

III.  BAPTISM 41 

IV.  CONFIRMATION 59 

V.    RENUNCIATION 77 

VI.     OBEDIENCE 95 

VII.    THE  CREED 117 

VIII.     THE  CHURCH 141 

IX.     PRAYER 165 

X.     THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 183 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


NEW  BIOGRAPHY 

The  Life  of  Clara  Barton 

BY  PERCY    H.    EPLER 

Illustrated,  Cloth,  I2mo 

This  is  the  first  biography  that  has  ever  been  pub- 
lished on  the  life  of  Clara  Barton.  From  the  wealth  of 
material  at  his  disposal  the  author  has  made  a  most 
fascinating  book.  Miss  Barton's  friend,  he  has  supple- 
mented his  own  knowledge  of  her  with  facts  drawn  from 
her  diaries,  correspondence,  lectures,  and  addresses.  It 
has  been  his  purpose,  in  so  far  as  is  possible,  to  reveal 
the  story  of  Miss  Barton's  life  through  her  own  writings 
and  consequently  much  use  is  made  of  hitherto  unpub- 
lished manuscripts.  The  result  is  a  vivid  picture  of  a 
woman  whose  passion  for  humanity  was  so  great  that 
even  though  she  was  eighty  years  old  she  went  to  the 
front  at  the  beginning  of  the  Spanish  War.  Dr.  Epler 
reviews  Miss  Barton's  entire  career  from  her  school- 
teaching  days  through  the  battlefields  of  the  Civil  War, 
the  Franco-Prussian  War,  and  the  Spanish  War,  to  her 
death  in  1911. 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


NEW  BIOGRAPHY 

In  the  Footsteps  of  Napoleon  : 

His  Life  and  Its  Famous  Scenes 
BY  JAMES    MORGAN 

Author  of  "  Abraham  Lincoln,"  "  The  Life  Work  of  Edward  A.   Moseley  in  the 
Service  of  Humanity,"  etc. 

Illustrated,  Cloth,  I2mo 

This  is  a  new  and  fascinating  biography  of  one  of 
the  most  interesting  men  the  world  has  known.  It  is 
the  result  of  a  five  months'  tour  by  Mr.  Morgan,  who 
started  at  Napoleon's  birthplace  in  Corsica  and  followed 
the  "  path "  of  his  eventful  career  from  city  to  city, 
from  post  to  post,  from  success  to  downfall  and  death. 
Napoleon's  story  is  as  dramatic  as  any  in  history  and 
as  it  is  told  against  its  true  background  the  incidents 
stand  out  more  vividly  than  ever  before,  and  a  more 
accurate  concept  of  the  real  character  of  the  man  and 
of  the  significance  of  the  affairs  in  which  he  played 
the  leading  part  is  made  possible.  The  illustrations, 
collected  from  many  sources  and  including  a  number 
of  rare  prints  and  drawings,  constitute  a  complete  pic- 
torial survey  of  the  life  of  the  "little  Corsican." 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A  A      000006165    5 


